GIFT   OF 


i 


10 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 
ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST? 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 
ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST? 

PROBLEMS   OF   CHRISTOLOGY 

DISCUSSED    IN 

SIX   HASKELL   LECTURES 

AT    OBERLIN,   OHIO 


BY 

FRIEDRICH  LOOPS,  PH.D.,  Tn.D. 

Professor  of  Church  History  in  the  University  of  Halle- Wittenberg,  Germany 


CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
NEW   YORK    :    :    :    :    :    1913 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  April,  1913 


PREFACE 

THE  following  lectures  are  here  printed  as 
they  were  given  between  the  26th  of  September 
and  the  4th  of  October,  1911,  at  Oberlin,  Ohio, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Theological  Depart- 
ment of  Oberlin  College.  I  have  since  added 
only  the  notes.  These  notes  may  excuse  the 
delay  of  printing.  For  I  was  not  able  to  find 
the  time  for  the  work  of  preparing  them  before 
our  long  autumn  vacation. 

Originally  the  lectures  were  written  in  Ger- 
man. In  translating  them,  I  enjoyed  for  the 
second  lecture  the  assistance  of  my  nephew,  Mr. 
Gustav  Braunholtz,  M.A.,  of  Cambridge,  Eng- 
land; and  for  the  five  others  that  of  Mr.  Sieg- 
fried Grosskopf,  M.A.,  of  Bloemfontein,  South 
Africa.  It  is  a  pleasure  for  me  to  thank  now 
in  public  these  friendly  helpers. 

Thanks  are  also  to  be  carried  by  this  book 
to  all  the  Americans  whose  friendship  and  hos- 
pitality I  enjoyed  during  my  sojourn  in  their 
country,  especially  to  my  dear  colleague,  the 


304047 


vi  PREFACE 

professor  of  church  history  at  Oberlin  College, 
Dr.  A.  T.  Swing,  and  to  Mrs.  Swing  his  wife, 
whose  house  was  really  my  home  during  the  ten 
days  I  was  at  Oberlin.  I  am  also  indebted  to 
Dr.  Swing  for  his  kindly  share  in  reading  the 
proofs  of  this  book. 

And  if  these  lectures  should  come  into  the 
hands  of  one  or  another  of  my  hearers  to  whom 
I  had  no  occasion  to  speak  privately,  I  hope  they 
may  greet  them,  too,  with  greetings  of  that 
Spirit  which  is  a  spirit  of  unity,  uniting  not  only 
those  whom  the  sea  divides,  but  also  men  of 
different  character,  different  training,  and  dif- 
ferent views  about  matters  of  minor  importance 
in  the  unity  of  faith. 

FRIEDRICH  LOOPS. 
HALLE  A.  S. 

THE  2D  OF  MARCH,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.    JESUS  A  REAL  MAN  OF  OUR  HISTORY    ...        i 
Introduction.     The   theory   of  \$L.  ..B._ Smith,    A. 
Drews,  P.  Jensen,  and  others,  who  pretend  that 
Jesus  was  nothing  but  a  mythical  deity. 

II.     THE  LIBERAL  JESUS-PICTURE 40 

The  attempts  of  modern  Jesus-research  to  under- 
stand the  life  of  Jesus  as  a  purely  human  one. 

III.  THE    LIBERAL    JESUS-RESEARCH    AND    THE 

SOURCES 79 

The  liberal  Jesus-research  disputed  by  historical 
arguments,  its  assumption  that  Jesus  was  merely 
a  man  admitted. 

IV.  JESUS  NOT  MERELY  A  MAN 120 

Refutation  of  the  presupposition  of  liberal  Jesus- 
research,  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely  hu- 
man one. 

V.    THE  ANCIENT  CHRISTOLOGY  UNTENABLE    .    .     162 

The  ecclesiastical  doctrine  about  Jesus  Christ  ex- 
amined by  rational  arguments  and  by  arguments 
from  the  New  Testament  and  from  the  history 
of  dogmas. 

VI.     MODERN  FORMS  OF  CHRISTOLOGY      ....    201 

Modification  of  the  ancient  Christology  and  mod- 
ern attempts  to  understand  the  person  of  Jesus 
in  correspondence  with  Christian  belief. 

vii 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT 
JESUS  CHRIST? 

I 
JESUS  A  REAL  MAN  OF  OUR  HISTORY 

"  PROBLEMS  of  Christology"  is  the  subject  of 
my  lectures.  A  subject  somewhat  vaguely 
defined,  you  may  say.  Certainly.  But  a  less 
general  formulation  capable  of  giving  an  idea  of 
what  I  wish  to  say  could  scarcely  be  found.  I 
shall  discuss  problems  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  but  I 
shall  not  confine  myself  solely  to  them,  nor  shall 
I  touch  all  questions  brought  before  us  by  the 
life  of  Jesus.  I  shall  frequently  refer  to  the  his- 
tory of  the  ideas  about  the  person  of  Christ,  but 
I  do  not  intend  to  make  this  history  as  such  a 
subject  of  my  lectures.  I  do  not  wish  to  show 
how  systematic  theology  has  to  formulate  the 
Christological  problem  in  its  details,  and  yet  I 
shall  discuss  many  questions  outside  the  scope 
of  historical  consideration.  This  seems  to  prom- 
ise a  great  variety  of  views.  But  I  hope  that  my 


2  .WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

lectures  will  nevertheless  form  a  homogeneous 
whole,  for  ultimately  it  is  only  one  question 
which  I  shall  try  to  answer — the  question,  What 
modern  Christianity  has  to  think  of  Jesus;  the 
question,  What  is  the  truth  about  Jesus  Christ? 

This  question  has  been  asked  for  about  nine- 
teen hundred  years.  All  former  centuries  have 
been  occupied  with  it.  But  for  every  century 
this  question  has  had  a  new  face.  Our  young 
century,  too,  already  has  its  own  token  in 
this  respect.  When  I  attempt  to  show  this, 
I  may  start,  on  the  one  hand,  from  my  native 
country,  Germany;  on  the  other  hand,  from  the 
country  rich  in  friendly  hospitality  in  which  I 
have  the  honor  now  to  speak. 

It  is  Germany  where  research  on  the  life  of 
Jesus  originated,  and  up  to  the  present  day  it 
has  remained  the  chief  country  for  these  studies. 
In  England,  indeed,  where  we  have  an  older 
civilization,  the  age  of  the  so-called  enlighten- 
ment began  earlier  than  in  Germany,  and  in  the 
Anglican  deism  the  biblical  tradition  about  Jesus 
was  subjected  to  criticism  at  an  earlier  date. 
Nevertheless  it  was  Germany  that  first  made 
the  attempt  to  understand  the  whole  life  of  Jesus 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  3 

from  a  purely  natural  point  of  view.  Hermann 
Samuel  Reimarus  (f  1768)  was  so  bold  as  to 
do  this  in  a  fairly  long  book  found  among  his 
papers  after  his  death.  And  it  was  no  other 
than  Lessing  who,  in  1774-78,  brought  parts  of 
this  work  on  the  literary  market  as  Fragments 
from  the  Wolffenbiittel- Library.1  The  studies  of 
the  next  sixty  years  were  more  conservative. 
Then,  in  1835,  David  Friedrich  Strauss  made 
a  new  beginning  in  the  life-of-Jesus-question.2 
And  though  he  found  many  opponents,  and 
though  the  majority  of  the  German  theologians 
in  the  nineteenth  century  went  an  essentially 
other  way,  nevertheless  we  see  the  strong  in- 
fluence of  his  views  in  an  unbroken  chain  of 
learned  works  in  Germany  up  to  the  present 
day.  The  aim  of  Reimarus,  and  later  of  Strauss, 
had  been  to  prove  the  life  of  Jesus  a  natural 
human  life  and  to  give  the  development  of  the 
traditions  which  raised  Jesus  into  the  super- 
human sphere.  This  has  also  been  the  aim  of 
the  most  progressive  liberal  German  theology 
since  that  time. 

1  Lessing's  Werke,  Berlin,  Gustav  Hempel,  XIV,  79~439- 

2  D.  F.  Strauss,  Das  Leben  Jesu,  kritisch  bearbeitet,  Tubingen, 
I,  1835,  II,  1836. 


4  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

This  aim  is  not  the  right  one,  indeed,  as  I 
think;  but  yet  we  must  concede  that  an  aston- 
ishing amount  of  work  and  sagacity  were  em- 
ployed to  fulfil  it.  And  in  the  courage  to  defend 
their  convictions,  in  readiness  to  make  sacrifices 
for  what  they  considered  to  be  the  truth,  the 
supporters  of  these  views  often  surpassed  their 
opponents.  Even  in  our  day  not  a  few  Ger- 
man theologians  really  have  this  aim;  even  the 
last  months  brought  a  learned  and  careful  docu- 
ment of  this  line  of  thought,  intended  for  widest 
circulation,  viz.,  an  exhaustive  article  by  Pro- 
fessor Heitmuller  (Marburg)  on  Jesus  Christ,  in 
the  Handwbrterbuch  edited  by  F.  M.  Schiele  and 
L.  Zscharnack.1 

Quite  a  different  road  has  been  followed  for 
many  years  by  your  countryman,  a  professor  of 
mathematics,  and  later  of  philosophy,  in  Tu- 
lane  University  at  New  Orleans,  William  Ben- 
jamin Smith.  He  has  expressed  his  thoughts 
most  clearly  in  a  new  book  published  in  German 
three  months  ago.  The  title  of  this  book,  Ecce 

1  Die  Religion  in  Geschichte  und  Gegenwart.  Handworterbuch  in 
gemeinverstdndlicher  Darstellung.  Unter  Mitwirkung  von  Her- 
mann Gunkel  und  Otto  Scheel  herausgegeben  von  Friedrich  Michael 
Schiele  und  Leopold  Zscharnack,  Tubingen,  III,  343-410. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  5 

is  characteristic,  for  Smith  does  not  intend 
to  sketch  a  purely  human,  but  a  purely  divine 
Jesus.  The  man  Jesus,  whose  life  the  biographers 
of  Jesus  tried  to  give,  according  to  Smith  did  not 
exist.  Smith  himself  sharply  and  clearly  defines 
the  way  he  is  going.  The  New  Testament,  he 
says,2  teaches  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  but  also  fre- 
quently introduces  him  as  a  man  who  was  born, 
grew,  hungered,  thirsted,  was  tired  like  other 
men,  suffered  as  man  and  died,  was  buried,  and 
was  raised  from  the  dead.  The  orthodox  doc- 
trine, he  says,  has  accepted  this  twofold  scheme 
and  formed  the  high  mystery  of  the  God-man, 
which  people  are  called  upon  to  believe.  But  to 
our  intellect,  he  thinks,  the  God-man  is  a  contra- 
diction in  itself,  an  absurdity  which  a  reasonable 
man  cannot  accept  in  peace.  Consequently,  he 
thinks  only  one  of  two  views  possible:  either 
Jesus  was  a  man  whom  posterity  only  deified, 
or  he  was  a  god  erroneously  made^  man.  by 
tradition.  In  the  past,  Smith  says,  the  critics 
unanimously  adopted  the  former  view.  But  all 
their  learning  and  splendid  sagacity  was  squan- 

1W.  B.  Smith,  Ecce  Deus.     Die  urchristliche  Lehre  des  rein- 
gottlichen  Jesu,  Jena,   1911. — 2Comp.  pp.  5-8. 


6  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

dered  on  an  impossible  task,  for  Smith  considers 
as  a  failure  the  attempt  to  understand  the  rise 
of  Christianity  under  the  supposition  that  Jesus 
was  a  man.  He  sees  the  cradle  of  Christendom 
in  a  pre-christian  cult  of  Jesus  in  the  Jewish 
diaspora  and  in  similar  cults  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire. Jesus,  for  him,  is  originally  a  god,  or  rather 
a  name  of  the  one  God  who  was  revered  in  simi- 
lar cults  under  other  names.  When  people  spoke 
of  his  death,  they  originally  meant  a  dying  god, 
for  such  myths  circulated  widely.  The  story 
that  this  God  Jesus  lived  in  Judea  as  man  was 
but  the  result  of  giving  the  subject  of  the  myth 
a  human  form.  In  reality  the  man  Jesus  never 
existed. 

If  this  theory  of  W.  B.  Smith  were  but  the 
fancy  of  an  amateur,  as  is  frequently  said,  it 
would  not  be  worth  our  while  to  waste  any  more 
words  about  it.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  Just 
as  the  article  of  Professor  Heitmiiller,  referred  to 
before,  can  only  be  appreciated  in  connection 
with  the  whole  history  of  the  life-of-Jesus- 
problem  in  Germany,  so  W.  B.  Smith,  too, 
must  be  considered  as  the  representative,  prob- 
ably the  most  important  representative,  of  a 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  7 

line  of  thought  surely  not  singular  in  modern 
times. 

This  is  the  first  point  that  I  have  to  discuss. 

Even  as  long  as  a  century  ago,  Smith  had  a 
precursor  in  the  French  mathematician  and 
astronomer,  Charles  Francois  Dupuis  (f  1809), 
one  of  the  few  members  of  the  National  Con- 
vention who  survived  the  Revolution.  This 
Dupuis  derived1  Christianity,  the  worship  of 
Jesus  and  his  life-story,  from  the  Oriental  solar 
cult  and  from  myths  which  the  latter  produced. 
And  in  trying  to  show  Jesus  as  the  double  of 
Mithras,  he  declared  without  any  restriction 
that  Jesus,  the  object  of  the  Christian  worship, 
never  existed  as  man.  Although  this  theory 
of  Dupuis  was  brought  before  the  public  as 
late  as  1834  m  a  new  edition  of  an  epitome 
of  his  great  work,2  nevertheless  it  perished  like 
so  many  other  theories,  customs,  and  institu- 
tions of  the  National  Convention  times.  But 
the  recent  past  revived  it,  as  it  did  so  many  other 
theories  of  the  eighteenth  century.  As  early  as 
1886  the  English  writer  John  M.  Robertson 

1  Ch.  F.  Dupuis,  Origine  de  tons  les  cultes,  3  vols.,  Paris,  1796. 

2  Ch.  F.  Dupuis,  Abrege  de  Forigine  de  tons  les  cultes,  Paris,  1834. 


8  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

endeavored  to  explain  the  stones  of  Jesus  as 
completely  as  possible  from  ancient  mytho- 
logical traditions  of  various  kinds,  and,  after 
he  had  collected,  in  1900,  his  essays  in  a  bulky 
volume  bearing  the  title  Christianity  and  My- 
thology, occasional  notice  of  his  ideas  was 
taken  also  outside  of  England.  But  Robertson 
did  not  consider  the  Jesus  of  tradition  as  wholly 
a  fiction  of  the  Gospels,  for  he  held  it  to  be  a 
tenable  hypothesis  that  a  certain  Jesus  was  the 
obscure  founder  of  the  cult-community  in  whose 
midst  the  story  of  Jesus  was  formed  and  de- 
veloped. 

Pastor  Albert  Kalthoff,  of  Bremen  (f  1906), 
on  the  other  hand,  who,  in  1902,  tried  to  give  a 
solution  of  the  Jesus  problem  without  accepting  a 
historical  Jesus,1  made  but  a  limited  use  of  my- 
thology to  explain  the  Gospel  history.  But  for 
the  Marburg  professor  of  Assyriology,  Peter  Jen- 
sen, who,  in  1906,  published  a  book  of  one  thou- 
sand pages  on  the  Babylonian  Gilgamesch-Epos,2 

*A.  Kalthoff,  Das  Christus-Problem,  Leipsic,  1902;  Die  Ent- 
stehung  des  Christentums.  Neue  Beitrdge  zum  Christus-Problem, 
Leipsic,  1904;  Was  wissen  wir  von  Jesus  ?  Berlin,  1904. 

2  P.  Jensen,  Das  Gilgamesch-Epos  in  der  ,7eltlitteratur,  I,  Strass- 
burg,  1906. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  9 

Jesus  is  no  other  than  the  mythical  hero  of 
that  epos,  his  history  but  an  echo  of  what  is 
told  of  Gilgamesch.  And  Arthur  Drews,  pro- 
fessor of  philosophy  at  Karlsruhe,  who  in  the 
last  two  years  has  caused  some  excitement  in 
Germany  with  his  book  Die  Christusmytheyl  here 
expresses  views  similar  to  those  of  W.  B.  Smith; 
moreover,  he  is  directly  dependent  on  a  book 
of  W.  B.  Smith  published  in  Germany  in  I9o6.2 
And  besides  A.  Drews  we  could  mention  many 
others  who  have  supported  similar  views  in 
a  more  sporadic  form.3  It  is,  therefore,  not 
an  individual  position  which  W.  B.  Smith  de- 
fends; and  he  defends  this  position  in  the 
most  remarkable  manner.  In  Germany,  A. 
Drews  has  until  now  been  considered  the  most 
remarkable  supporter  of  the  assertion  that  Jesus 
was  not  a  historical  but  a  mythological  person; 
for  Jensen,  though  unquestionably  more  learned, 
defends  with  threadbare  arguments  an  opinion 
which,  aside  from  its  author,  has  not  found  a 


1  A.  Drews,  Die  Christusmythe,  Jena,  1909 ;   2d  edition,  1910. 

2  W.  B.  Smith,  Der  vorchristliche  Jesus,  Giessen,  1906. 

3  Comp.  C.  Clemen,;  'Religions geschichtliche  Erkldrung  des  Neuen 
Testaments,  Giessen,  1^69,  and  the  later  work  of  the  same  author, 
Der  geschichtliche  Jesus,  Giessen,  1911. 


io  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

scientific  sponsor.  But  I  am  convinced  that, 
as  soon  as  the  new  book  of  Smith  becomes  more 
widely  known  in  Germany,  Arthur  Drews  will 
yield  the  first  place  to  Smith,  as  the  latter  is  the 
wittier  of  the  two  and  far  more  at  home  in  the- 
ological literature.  Moreover,  it  is  a  recom- 
mendation for  his  work  that  he  is  a  man  for 
whom  the  question  of  the  origin  of  Christianity 
has  been  a  real  problem  for  many  years,  and, 
as  far  as  we  can  judge,  Smith's  aim  is  not  to 
propagate  a  sensational  theory  and  acquire  per- 
sonal notoriety,  but  only  to  serve  the  truth. 
Finally,  however  strange  the  position  of  W.  B. 
Smith  may  seem,  it  is  nevertheless  not  uncon- 
nected with  a  broader  tendency  in  modern  and 
scientific  thought. 

Strange  enough,  indeed,  will  his  position  ap- 
pear to  every  Christian.  The  Gospel  story 
of  Jesus  was,  in  his  opinion,  originally  nothing 
but  the  announcement  of  the  God  Jesus,  clothed 
in  the  form  of  parables  and  symbolical  history. 
When,  for  instance,  we  are  told  that  Jesus  in 
a  synagogue  healed  a  man  with  a  withered 
hand,1  then,  according  to  Smith,  the  man  is 

'Mark  3:  I/. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  n 

meant  to  be  the  Jewish  people,  who  are  para- 
lyzed by  the  letter  of  the  Jewish  law  and  by 
tradition  but  will  be  restored  to  strength  and 
power  by  the  liberating  influence  of  the  Jesus- 
cult.  Only  much  later,  as  the  parables  were  not 
understood,  the  announcement  of  Jesus  was 
materialized.  Even  Saint  Paul  did  not  know 
a  man  Jesus.  The  God  Jesus  who  died  for 
all  men  filled  his  thoughts.  These  are  certainly 
strange  assertions.  They  cannot  make  any  im- 
pression on  a  Christian  who  really  knows  the 
Gospels.  Nevertheless  we  must,  as  I  said,  re- 
main aware  of  the  fact  that  these  statements  are 
not  unconnected  with  a  broader  tendency  in 
modern  and  scientific  thought.  In  the  first 
place,  symbolism  is  beginning  to  become  mod- 
ern. A  person  who  has  not  gained  an  inward  re- 
lation to  the  Gospel  story  will  not  find  Smith's 
interpretations  of  the  parables  and  stories  of  the 
New  Testament  essentially  different  from  other 
symbolistic  wisdom.  Secondly,  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  New  Testament  according  to  the 
comparative  history  of  religion,  has  for  some 
time  been  the  watchword  of  many  scholars.  Do 
they  not  intend  to  open  a  new  and  promising 


12  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

way  for  scientific  investigation  by  this  watch- 
word ?  A  few  examples1  will  give  us  the  answer. 
The  Leipsic  philosopher,  Rudolf  Seydel 
(t  1892),  tried  as  early  as  1882  to  derive  many 
particulars  of  the  evangelical  story  of  Jesus 
from  the  Buddha  legend.2  Hermann  Gunkel 
(Giessen),  in  1903,  contended3  that  the  Chris- 
tology  of  Saint  Paul  could  only  be  understood 
by  assuming  that  a  great  part  of  it  had  its  origin 
in  a  Messianic  theology  already  known  to  Paul 
while  still  a  Pharisee;  and  Arnold  Meyer  (Zurich) 
treated  this  postulate  as  a  tenable  hypothesis.4 
The  well-known  self-characterization  of  Jesus, 
"Son  of  Man,"  has  been  brought  into  con- 
nection with  old  myths  of  the  original  man.s 
The  myths  of  the  death  and  resurrection  of  a 
deity  have  been  used  by  Gunkel6  and  others7  to 
explain  the  primitive  Christian  ideas  about  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  Christ.  And  several 


Clemen,  Religions  geschichtliche  Erkldrung,  quoted 
above,  p.  9.  —  z  R.  Seydel,  Das  Evangelium  von  Jesu  in  seinen 
Verhdltnissen  zu  Buddha-Sage  und  Buddha-Lehre,  Leipsic,  1882. 
—  3  H.  Gunkel,  Zum  religions  -geschichtlichen  Verstdndnis  des  Neuen 
Testaments,  Gottingen,  1903,  p.  89  /.  —  4A.  Meyer,  Die  Aufer- 
stehung  Jesu  Christi,  Tubingen,  1905,  p.  29  /.  —  6Comp.  C. 
Clemen,  Religions  geschichtliche  Erkldrung,  p.  1  19  /.  —  6  H.  Gunkel, 
Zum  religionsgeschichtlichen  Verstdndnis,  p.  76  ff.  —  7  Comp. 
Clemen,  p.  146  /. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  13 

scholars  have  pointed  out  the  role  played  by 
the  term  "Saviour"  or  "Redeemer-God"  in  the 
syncretistic  religious  movement  of  the  early 
Roman  Empire,  even  in  the  cult  of  the  emperors.1 
Certainly  all  these  attempts  to  explain  the 
Christian  ideas  of  Jesus  by  means  of  the  history 
of  religions  do  not  in  the  least  intend  to  deny  the 
historicity  of  Jesus,  but  are  rather  meant  to 
support  the  conviction  that  the  worship  of  Jesus 
had  its  root  in  the  deification  of  a  man.  Thus 
they  seem  to  be  in  complete  opposition  to  the 
theory  of  W.  B.  Smith.  Here  again,  however, 
we  find  the  old  truth  that  extremes  meet. 
For  if  we  recognize  all  assertions  made  by  the 
many-voiced  choir  of  the  leading  scholars  in- 
terested in  the  history  of  religions,  then  we 
should  find  parallels  for  everything  in  Jesus  that 
goes  beyond  the  ordinary  measure  of  men;  and 
these  parallels  often  are  not  only  regarded  as  par- 
allels, but  appear  as  factors  which  produced  the 
Christian  opinions  about  Jesus.  It  was,  there- 


*A.  Harnack,  Lehrbuch  der  Dogmengeschichte,  4th  edition, 
Tubingen,  1909-10,  I,  136  /.;  P.  Wendland  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur 
neutestamentliche  Wissenschaft,  1904,  p.  335  /.;  comp.  H.  Lietz- 
mann,  Der  Weltheiland.  Eine  Jenaer  Rosenvorlesung  mit  Anmer- 
kungen,  Bonn,  1909. 


i4  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

fore,  not  so  very  far-fetched  if  people  completely 
denied  the  existence  of  the  bearer  of  all  these 
amplifications  derived  from  non-christian  relig- 
ions. The  theory  of  W.  B.  Smith  is  the  most 
extreme  form  and  at  the  same  time  the  cari- 
cature of  the  efforts  to  explain  the  Christian  ap- 
preciation of  Jesus  on  the  basis  of  comparative 
religion.  It  is,  therefore,  not  an  individual 
fancy  of  one  or  more  amateurs,  but  is  undoubt- 
edly connected  with  a  broad  tendency  of  modern 
scientific  thought. 

This  theory  of  W.  B.  Smith,  it  is  true,  will 
not  find  any  more  acknowledgment  in  the  scien- 
tific world  in  the  future  than  it  has  found  till 
now.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  of  its  having  been 
raised  is  significant  for  the  present  situa- 
tion. At  the  very  moment  when  the  history 
of  religions  presumed  to  explain  the  godhead 
of  the  man  Jesus  as  derived  completely  from 
other  religions,  at  this  very  moment  the  theory 
that  Jesus  was  a  deified  man  turned  into  the 
opposite  one,  viz.,  that  the  godhead  of  Jesus 
was  the  primary  and  intelligible  factor  and  his 
human  life  nothing  but  a  fiction. 

It  is  the  aim  of  my  lectures  to  show  that 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  15 

neither  of  the  two  alternatives  formulated  by 
W.  B.  Smith  is  tenable:  neither  the  view  that 
Jesus  was  purely  a  man  whom  posterity  only 
elevated  beyond  the  human  measure;  nor  the 
other,  that  Jesus-worship  was  originally  worship 
of  a  god  who  only  through  complete  misunder- 
standing of  the  oldest  symbolical  announcement 
became  changed  into  a  man  of  human  history. 

The  former  view  still  prevails  where  the  tra- 
ditional Christian  ideas  are  abandoned.  It  is 
also  much  more  difficult  to  show  that  it  is  false. 
Therefore,  three  of  my  following  lectures  will 
deal  with  this  side  of  the  question.  The  other 
side,  I  hope,  will  be  settled  in  this  lecture. 

Of  course,  all  my  six  lectures  would  not  suffice 
if  I  were  to  deal  with  all  the  conjectures  made 
by  Smith  and  Jensen  and  Drews  in  support 
of  their  position.  Ink  is  cheap,  and  the  sug- 
gestive force  of  a  supposed  truth  has  always 
been  exceedingly  productive  and  misleading. 
But  nobody  need  check  a  complicated  mathe- 
matical sum  from  beginning  to  end  if  he  finds  a 
flaw  in  the  first  proposition.  It  is,  indeed,  de- 
serving of  praise  that  some  theologians1  sac- 

1  For  instance:  H.  von  Soden,  Hat  Jesus  gelebt?  Berlin-Schoene- 
berg,  1910.  J.  Weiss,  Jesus  v.  Nazareth — Mythus  oder  Geschichte? 


16  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

rificed  their  time  in  order  to  show  by  a  few 
examples  how  untenable  are  the  assertions  of 
Jensen,  Smith,  and  others.  But  detailed  criti- 
cism of  supposed  evidences  for  an  impossible 
view  is  neither  interesting  nor  useful.  It  will 
suffice  if  we  prove  the  impossibility  of  the  view 
itself  in  a  more  simple  manner. 

In  doing  so  I  shall  refrain  from  argumentation 
by  means  of  the  Gospels,  canonical  and  apocry- 
phal. Not  because  the  Gospels  cannot  furnish 
proof,  for  every  one  who  reads  the  Gospels  with- 
out prejudice  will  acknowledge  that — even  if 
many  particulars  in  the  evangelical  tradition 
were  fictitious — yet  there  is  in  the  Gospels  a  suffi- 
cient amount  of  hard  indissoluble  rock  on  which 
we  can  base  our  conviction  of  Christ's  human 
life.  We  may  refer  especially  to  the  local  color 
of  Palestine  in  the  Gospels,  and  also  to  the  close 
connection  between  many  words  of  Jesus  and  the 
Jewish  ideas  and  customs  of  the  time  spoken  of 
in  the  Gospels.  With  such  arguments,  a  Swedish 
rabbi,  unquestionably  an  impartial  scholar,  Pro- 
fessor Gottlieb  Klein,  of  Stockholm,  tried  last 
year  with  some  success  to  prove  the  historicity 

Tiibingen,  1910.  H.  Weinel,  1st  das  "liberate "  Jesusbild  widerlegt, 
Tubingen,  1910.  C.  Clemen,  Der  geschichtliche  Jfsus,  Giessen,i9i I. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  17 

of  Jesus.1  But  against  W.  B.  Smith  we  cannot 
quote  the  Gospels  if  we  do  not  disprove  his  in- 
terpretation of  them  in  detail,  and  that  would 
require  much  time  and  afford  little  pleasure.  I 
shall  have  occasion  to  speak  about  the  Gospels 
in  another  lecture.  To-day  I  pass  them  by. 

Then  the  question  rises  whether  there  are  any 
other  sources  for  the  life  of  Jesus  which  could 
disprove  the  view  of  W.  B.  Smith. 

Smith  tries  to  show  that  there  are  no  non- 
christian  sources  that  refute  his  theory.  I 
could  grant  this  to  some  extent,  but  in  order  to 
make  the  whole  question  intelligible,  I  shall 
enter  into  a  discussion  as  to  the  real  or  supposed 
non-christian  references  to  Jesus.  The  strange 
theory  of  Smith  may  become  psychologically 
more  intelligible  if  I  begin  with  evidences  once 
highly  esteemed  but  now  discredited  by  all  con- 
scientious scholars. 

The  oldest  non-christian  evidence  was  once 
considered  to  be  two  texts  preserved  by  Eusebius, 
Bishop  of  Csesarea,  in  his  Ecclesiastical  History, 
brought  to  a  close  in  325.2  Eusebius  had  found 

1  G.  Klein,  1st  Jesus  eine  historische  Personlichkeit  ?  Tubingen, 
1910. — 2  Eusebius,  H.  E.,  I,  13,  6  /. 


i8  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

them,  as  he  tells  us,  in  a  Syriac  manuscript 
which  was  deposited  in  the  public  archives  of 
Edessa.  He  quotes  them  in  Greek  translation. 
They  contain  a  letter  of  the  king,  Abgar  Ukka- 
ma,  of  Edessa,  to  Jesus  and  a  short  answer  of 
the  latter.  Both  letters  pretend  to  date  from 
the  time  of  the  public  activity  of  Jesus.  Abgar, 
who  has  heard  of  the  miracles  of  Jesus,  asks 
him  to  take  the  trouble  to  come  to  him  and 
heal  the  disease  he  has.  Jesus  does  not  ac- 
cede to  his  request  because,  as  he  writes,  it 
is  necessary  for  him  to  fulfil  all  things  there 
for  which  he  had  been  sent.  But  he  promises 
the  king  to  send,  after  having  been  taken  up 
to  his  Father,  one  of  his  disciples.  A  narrative 
passage  following  the  letters  in  the  manuscript 
of  the  Edessa  archives,  and  also  quoted  by 
Eusebius,  reports  that,  according  to  this  promise 
of  Jesus,  after  his  ascension,  in  the  twenty-ninth 
year  of  our  era,  Thaddaeus,  one  of  the  seventy 
disciples,  mentioned  by  Saint  Luke,  was  sent  to 
Edessa,  where  he  healed  the  king  and  preached 
the  gospel  successfully  to  him  and  his  people. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  Eusebius  really 
made  use  of  a  manuscript  of  the  Edessa  ar- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  19 

chives,  and  it  is  certain  that  there  was  a  king 
Abgar  Ukkama  in  Edessa  at  the  time  of  Jesus 
(9-46  A.  D.).  Moreover,  the  genuineness  of  this 
correspondence  between  King  Abgar  and  Jesus 
has  been  defended  recently  by  a  German  Cath- 
olic scholar.1  Nevertheless,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  correspondence  is  a  forgery. 
For,  although  Christianity  came  to  the  empire  of 
Edessa  at  a  very  early  date2 — as  early  as  190 
we  find  Christian  communities  there — still  it  is 
certain  that  the  first  of  the  royal  house  to  become 
a  Christian  was  Abgar  IX  in  the  beginning  of 
the  third  century.  The  alleged  correspondence 
between  Abgar  V  and  Jesus  could  only  belong 
to  the  time  after  this  first  Christian  king.  Hence 
this  correspondence  cannot  prove  the  historicity 
of  Jesus. 

Another  letter  pretends  to  have  been  written 
shortly  after  the  death  of  Jesus.  It  is  a  letter  of 
Pilate  to  the  Roman  Emperor,  preserved  in 

*].  Nirschl,  Der  Briefwechsel  des  Konig  Abgar  von  Edessa  mit 
Jesus,  oder  die  Abgarfrage  (Der  Katholik,  Zeitschrift  fur  Katho- 
lische  Wissenschaft  und  kirchliches  Leben,  ed.  J.  M.  Raich,  Mainz, 
1896,11,  I7/.,  97/.,  etc.). 

2Eusebius,  H.  E.,  5,  23,  4;  comp,  F.  C.  Burkitt,  Early  Christian- 
ity outside  the  Roman  Empire,  Cambridge,  1894,  and  Early  East- 
ern Christianity,  London,  1904,  first  lecture. 


20  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

some  apocrypha  of  the  fourth  century.1  The 
letter  speaks  in  general  of  the  miracles  of 
Jesus,  states  that  Jesus  had  been  handed  over 
to  him,  Pilate,  by  the  Jews,  and  again  by  him, 
after  having  been  scourged,  to  the  Jews.  The 
latter  then  crucified  him,  but  Jesus  rose  from 
the  dead  in  spite  of  the  guards  at  the  grave. 
Now,  scholars  do  not  agree  as  to  the  date  of  the 
origin  of  this  letter.  As  early  as  the  end  of  the 
second  century,  in  the  writings  of  the  African 
Christian  Tertullian  we  find  the  opinion  that 
Pilate  reported  favorably  on  Jesus  to  his  im- 
perial master,2  and  in  150  the  Christian  apologist 
Justin  Martyr  takes  it  for  granted  that  minutes 
were  taken  down  under  Pilate,  by  which  the 
evangelical  narrations  about  Jesus  were  con- 
firmed.3 It  is,  therefore,  not  impossible  that  a 
story,  a  part  of  which  was  the  letter  of  Pilate 
referred  to,  or  a  similar  one,  circulated  as  early 
as  the  second  century.  But  we  cannot  prove 

lEvang.  Nicod.,  Rec.  A,  cap.  13,  ed.C.  v.  Tischendorf,  Evangelia 
apocrypha,  ed.  sec.,  Leipsic,  1876,  p.  413;  Ada  Petri  et  Pauli,  cap. 
4O/.,  ed.  C.  v.  Tischendorf,  Acta  apostol.  apocrypha,  Leipsic,  1851, 
p.  i6/.,"  comp.  A.  Harnack,  Die  Chronologic  der  altchristl.  Litter  atur, 
I,  Leipsic,  1897,  p.  605  /. 

2 Tertullian,  apol.  c.  21,  ed.  Oehler,  ed.  min.,  p.  103. 

3  Justin,  apol.  I,  35  and  48,  ed.  Otto,  I,  106  C  and  132  C. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  21 

this  satisfactorily.  So  much,  however,  is  cer- 
tain— that  this  letter  of  Pilate  is  not  genuine. 
An  official  report  of  the  procurator  would  show 
quite  a  different  face. 

Forty  years  later  than  the  letter  of  Pilate, 
if  genuine,  would  be,  according  to  the  opinion 
of  some  scholars,  a  letter  of  a  certain  Mara, 
son  of  Serapion,  to  Serapion  his  son,  published 
in  1855  from  a  Syriac  manuscript  of  the  British 
Museum.1  It  is  a  letter  of  advice  from  an 
earnest  father  to  his  youthful  son,  and  makes 
no  direct  mention  of  the  name  of  Christ.  But  in 
connection  with  a  commemoration  of  Socrates 
and  Pythagoras  the  letter  alludes  to  the  wise 
king  of  the  Jews  and  considers  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  and  the  dispersion  of  the  Jews  as  an 
act  of  divine  vengeance  for  their  having  mur- 
dered him.  Socrates,  so  the  letter  states,  is  not 
dead,  because  of  Plato  (who  kept  his  memory 
alive),  nor  is  the  wise  king  because  of  the  laws 
which  he  promulgated. 

If  this  letter,  written  as  it  seems  by  a  heathen, 
really  dates  from  the  year  73,  as,  for  instance,  the 

XW.  Cureton,  Spicilegium  Syriacum,  London,  1855,  pp.  43-48 
and  70-76. 


22  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

late  Professor  Zockler  of  Greifswald  assumed,1 
then  this  letter  would  perhaps  be  a  pagan  wit- 
ness for  Jesus,  independent  of  the  Christian 
tradition.  But  the  first  editor,  the  learned  Cu- 
reton,  gave  the  letter  a  later  date.  He  did 
not  deny  that  it  was  possibly  written  about 
the  year  95  A.  D.,  but  for  himself  he  con- 
sidered it  more  correct  to  assign  its  date  to 
the  latter  half  of  the  second  century.  Even  in 
the  former  case  the  knowledge  of  Jesus  shown 
by  the  writer  probably  originated  in  Christian 
tradition.  In  the  second  case,  which  has  many 
arguments  in  its  favor,2  this  conclusion  is  una- 
voidable. Consequently,  the  letter  of  Mara  can 
probably  not  figure  as  a  pagan  witness  for  Jesus. 
It  is,  therefore,  no  conclusive  evidence  of  the 
historicity  of  Jesus. 

The  uncertainty  as  to  the  date,  which  lessens 
the  value  of  the  Mara  letter,  fortunately  does 
not  exist  in  the  case  of  the  writer  of  whom  I  am 
to  speak  now,  viz.,  Josephus,  the  Jewish  his- 
torian. For  his  Antiquitates  Judaicce  (Jewish 

1  Real-Encyklopadie  fur  prot.  TheoL  und  Kirche,  3.  Aufl.,  ed.  A. 
Hauck,  IX,  3,  Leipsic,  1901. 

2  Comp.  A.  Harnack,  Geschichte  der  altchristlichen  Litter atur  bis 
Eusfbius,  I,  Leipsic,  1893,  p.  763. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  23 

Antiquities),  which  come  into  consideration,  a 
Jewish  history  from  the  first  man  to  the  twelfth 
year  of  Nero,  that  is,  66  A.  D.,  can  be  accu- 
rately dated.  According  to  Josephus's  own  state- 
ment they  were  finished  at  Rome  in  the  win- 
ter 93-94.  And  certainly  it  is  highly  probable 
that  Josephus's  writings  were  not  influenced  by 
Christian  tradition.  Therefore,  assertions  of 
Josephus  about  Jesus  would  have  great  weight. 
But  nevertheless  we  have  no  definite  non-chris- 
tian  reference  to  Jesus  in  Josephus.  Twice  in 
our  texts  of  the  Antiquitates  Jesus  is  mentioned. 
The  first  passage  is:  At  that  time  lived  Jesus,  a 
wise  man,  if  indeed  it  be  proper  to  call  him  a  man. 
For  he  was  a  doer  of  wonderful  works ,  and  a 
teacher  of  such  men  as  receive  the  truth  in  gladness. 
And  he  attached  to  himself  many  of  the  Jews,  and 
many  also  of  the  Greeks.  He  was  the  Christ. 
When  Pilate,  on  the  accusation  of  our  principal 
men,  condemned  him  to  the  cross,  those  who  had 
loved  him  in  the  beginning  did  not  cease  loving 
him.  For  he  appeared  unto  them  again  alive  on 
the  third  day,  the  divine  prophets  having  told  these 
and  countless  other  wonderful  things  concerning 
him.  Moreover,  the  race  of  Christians,  named  after 


24  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

him,  continues  down  to  the  present  day.1  The 
second  passage  relates  that  the  high  priest 
Ananus  made  use  of  the  interval  between  the 
death  of  the  procurator  Festus  and  the  acces- 
sion to  office  of  his  successor,  Albinus  (that  is, 
probably  about  the  beginning  of  62  A.  D.)  for 
high-handed  action:  He  called  together,  so  Jose- 
phus  narrates,  the  Sanhedrim,  and  brought  before 
them  the  brother  of  Jesus,  the  so-called  Christ,  James 
by  name,  together  with  some  others,  and  accused 
them  of  violating  the  law  and  condemned  them  to 
be  stoned? 

The  former  famous  passage  is,  up  to  the  present 
time,  considered  by  almost  all  Roman  Catholic 
theologians  as  being  genuine.  But  that  means 
defending  a  lost  position.  A  person  who  writes 
as  the  Josephus-text  now  reads  confesses  him- 
self a  Christian.  But  Josephus  was  no  Christian. 
The  fact  that  Eusebius,  the  church  historian  re- 
ferred to  before,  as  early  as  about  325  A.  D.,  had 
the  same  text,  as  his  quotations  prove,3  and  that 
all  manuscripts  of  Josephus,  that  are  consider- 
ably later  than  Eusebius's  time,  have  the  present 

1  Antiquit.,  XVIII,  3,  3. — J  Antiquit.,  XX,  9,  I. — * H.  E.t  I, 
II,  7;  Demonst.  ev.,  3,  3,  105. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  25 

text,  only  proves  that  this  text  of  ours  is  older 
than  Eusebius,  but  not  that  Josephus  himself 
wrote  the  passage  in  question.  The  present  text 
of  the  Josephus  passage  is  interpolated  or  spuri- 
ous. Opinions  differ  as  to  which  of  these  two 
alternatives  is  the  more  probable,1  and  a  con- 
vincing decision  is  to  my  mind  impossible.  Two 
arguments  may  be  brought  forward  to  prove 
that  something  of  our  present  text  was  written 
by  Josephus  himself,  that,  therefore,  the  pas- 
sage is  only  interpolated,  i.  e.,  enlarged  by  spu- 
rious additions.  In  the  first  place,  we  may  point 
out  that  by  expunging  a  few  phrases  a  text  may 
be  reconstructed  which  might  have  been  written 
by  Josephus.  A  second  argument  may  be  de- 
rived from  the  second  passage  quoted,  which 
reports  that,  besides  the  others  who  were  con- 
demned by  Ananus,  also  James,  the  brother  of 
Jesus,  the  so-called  Christ,  was  executed.  For 
if  this  second  passage  is  genuine  (and  even  the 
most  recent  editor  of  Josephus,  the  late  historian 
of  our  University  of  Halle,  Benedictus  Niese, 
considered  it  genuine),  Josephus  must  have 

1  Comp.  E.  Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  jiidischen  Polkes  im  Zeitalter 
Jesu  Christi,  I,  3d  and  4th  editions,  Leipsic,  1901,  pp.  545-549. 


26  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

spoken  before  of  "Jesus,  the  so-called  Christ," 
because  here  he  is  introduced  as  a  well-known 
personage.  But,  to  say  nothing  about  the  first 
argument,  the  second,  too,  is  unconvincing, 
because  it  is  not  certain  that  the  second  passage 
belongs  to  Josephus  as  it  now  reads.  The  men- 
tion of  James  may  be  a  spurious  addition.  For, 
in  any  case,  the  former  passage  proves  that 
Christian  hands  were  at  work  in  revising  our  Jo- 
sephus-text.  Therefore,  with  regard  to  the  im- 
portance of  Josephus  in  the  question  of  the  life  of 
Jesus,  only  two  things  are  certain.  First,  that  if 
Josephus  wrote  anything  about  Jesus,  we  can- 
not know  what  he  wrote;  for  if  we  must  assume 
a  Christian  interpolator  in  the  former  famous 
passage,  we  cannot  expunge  what  he  added; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  could  he  not  also  have 
omitted  something  which  he  found  in  the  text? 
Secondly,  it  is  certain  that  we  do  not  know 
whether  Josephus  said  anything  at  all  about 
Jesus,  for  the  mention  of  James  may  be  an  inter- 
polation and  the  whole  passage  about  Jesus  a 
Christian  addition.  The  context  of  Josephus  is 
not  broken  by  striking  out  these  passages. 
Another  Jewish  historian  of  this  time,  Justus  of 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  27 

Tiberias,  whose  works  are  lost,  likewise  re- 
mained wholly  silent  about  Jesus,  as  a  learned 
father  of  the  church  relates.1 

According  to  Jewish  tradition,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  younger  contemporary  of  Josephus,  the 
Rabbi  Eliezer  ben  Hyrkanos,  told  how  he  met 
a  disciple  of  Jesus  the  Nazarene?  Moreover, 
the  learned  Swedish  rabbi,  Gottlieb  Klein,3  al- 
ready referred  to,  professes  to  have  proved,  in  a 
book  published  two  years  ago,  that  Eliezer  was 
also  well  acquainted  with  the  doctrine  of  Jesus, 
and  that  he,  like  the  older  Rabbi  Samuel  the 
Lesser,  took  an  interest  in  his  tragic  fate.  But 
I  do  not  consider  these  assertions  as  proved. 
And  the  report  of  Eliezer  that  he  met  the  Jewish 
Christian,  James  of  Kephar  Sekhanja,  cannot  be 
regarded  as  authentic  word  for  word,  as  it  was 
only  written  down  in  later  times  following  tra- 
dition. But  here  everything  depends  on  the  very 
words  which  call  James  of  Kephar  Sekhanja 
one  of  the  disciples  of  Jesus  the  Nazarene.  This 


,  Biblioth.,  cod.  33.    Migne,  Ser.  graca,  103,  col.  65. 

2  Handbuch  zu  dem  neutestamentlichen  Apokrypheti,  ed.  E.  Hen- 
necke,  Tubingen,  1904,  p.  68. 

3G.  Klein,  Der  dlteste  christliche  Katechismus  und  die  jiidische 
Propaganda-Litter  atur,  Berlin,  1909,  p.  113  ff.;  comp.  G.  Klein, 
1st  Jesus  eine  historische  Personlichkeit?  Tubingen,  1910,  p.  45. 


28  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

evidence,  too,  therefore,  remains  uncertain  and 
is  not  convincing. 

We  are  on  firmer  ground  when  we  come  to  the 
Roman  historian  Tacitus.  Smith,  it  is  true, 
tries  to  show  that  the  passage  now  in  question 
is  also  an  interpolation.1  But  here  the  wish  was 
father  to  the  thought.  Smith  himself  evidently 
does  not  regard  his  arguments  as  conclusive,  for 
he  thinks  that  he  can  get  rid  of  the  passage  even 
if  it  were  genuine.  It  is  a  passage  in  the  Annales 
of  Tacitus  (completed  about  116  A.  D.).2  Here 
Tacitus,  when  writing  about  the  Neronian  per- 
secution of  "  Christians,"  takes  occasion  to  add  a 
short  notice  about  Christ.  The  author  of  this 
name,  Christ,  he  says,  was  put  to  death  during  the 
reign  of  Tiberius  by  order  of  the  governor  Pontius 
Pilatus.  Thus  repressed  for  the  moment,  the  dis- 
astrous superstition  afterward  broke  out  afresh, 
not  only  in  Judea,  where  the  evil  originated,  but 
also  at  Rome,  where  all  atrocious  and  scandalous 
things  from  every  quarter  flow  together  and  become 
celebrated.  Karl  Weizsacker,  the  well-known 
German  theologian  (f  1899),  began  his  history 
of  the  Apostolic  Age  with  this  quotation,  to  my 

1 W.  B.  Smith,  Ecce  Deus,  p.  234  /. — 2  XV,  44. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  29 

mind  not  very  tactfully.  He  evidently  took  it 
for  granted  that  Tacitus  there  gives  us  informa- 
tion, independent  of  Christian  tradition,  but  de- 
rived from  an  older  source  or  from  careful  in- 
quiry. This  opinion  is  shared  by  many  scholars 
even  at  the  present  day,  and  there  is  much  to  be 
said  in  its  favor.  For  Tacitus  is  accustomed  to 
mark  particulars  which  he  knows  only  from  hear- 
say, and  here  we  do  not  find  such  a  mark.  But 
this  position  cannot  be  definitely  proved.  It  may 
be  possible,  I  grant,  that  the  notice  of  Tacitus  in 
its  first  part  is  merely  an  echo  of  gossip  originally 
Christian,  and  in  its  second  part  a  mixture  of 
conjecture  and  observation  by  Tacitus  himself. 
The  mention  of  Christ  by  Pliny  the  Younger,  a 
contemporary  of  Tacitus,  is  undoubtedly  de- 
pendent on  Christian  narratives,  and  the  same 
is  true  of  everything  that  later  pagan  authors 
tell  about  Jesus,  including  a  notice  of  Suetonius 
(about  120  A.  D.),  the  phrasing  of  which  leaves 
it  entirely  doubtful  whether  it  refers  to  Christ 
at  all.  In  the  same  manner  the  Jewish  blas- 
phemies against  Christ,  which  we  first  find  in 
Celsus,  the  pagan  controversialist,  about  180 
A.  D.,are  a  caricature  of  the  Christian  preaching. 


30  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

I  am,  therefore,  at  the  end  of  my  discussion 
of  the  non-christian  sources.  Do  they  suffice 
to  refute  the  statements  of  Smith,  Jensen,  and 
Drews?  Do  they  give  evidence  of  the  human 
life  of  Jesus  ?  I  answer,  they  make  it  very  diffi- 
cult to  hold  the  view  that  the  human  life  of 
Jesus  is  only  a  fiction,  but  we  can  hardly  say 
that  they  refute  it  convincingly. 

I  said,  they  make  the  statements  of  Smith 
and  his  group  very  difficult.  I  am  prepared  to 
drop  Josephus.  It  may  be,  as  we  saw,  that  he 
said  nothing  about  Jesus.  But  one  fact  must 
be  emphasized:  that,  if  Josephus  kept  silent 
about  Jesus,  his  silence  is  not  in  favor  of  Smith 
and  those  who  agree  with  him.  For  it  can  be 
satisfactorily  explained  by  the  circumstance  that 
Josephus,  having  become  a  friend  of  the  Romans, 
considered  it  advisable  completely  to  ignore  the 
Messianic  hope  of  his  nation,  as  being  suspicious 
from  the  political  point  of  view.  But  Tacitus 
throws  difficulties  in  the  way  of  Smith,  for  it  is 
not  likely  that  this  conscientious  historian  would 
tell  what  he  knew  only  from  hearsay  without 
mentioning  this  source.  Still  greater  are  the 
difficulties  arising  from  the  Jewish  tradition. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  31 

I  pass  by  the  notice  about  Rabbi  Eliezer  men- 
tioned above;  but  it  is  an  important  fact  that 
in  Jewish  tradition  we  do  not  meet  with  the 
least  doubt  about  the  human  life  of  Jesus.  The 
Jewish  theologians  of  the  first  and  second  cen- 
turies, whose  doctrines  and  narrations  are 
handed  down  by  the  Jewish  tradition,  were  con- 
nected by  tradition  with  the  time  when  Pilate 
was  procurator  in  Judea,  and  the  preaching 
about  Jesus  certainly  scandalized  them  from 
the  very  beginning.  If  they  had  been  in  a 
position  to  extirpate  this  preaching  by  showing 
that  the  whole  story  of  a  Jesus  who  lived  and 
died  under  Pilate  was  only  a  fiction,  they  would 
undoubtedly  have  done  so.  And  if  this  had 
been  the  case,  then  the  Jewish  tradition  would 
certainly  have  preserved  some  notice  of  this 
fact.  This  is  an  argumentum  e  silentio,  indeed, 
but  a  very  weighty  one.  I  concede,  however, 
that  the  historicity  of  Christ  cannot  be  con- 
clusively proved  by  the  non-christian  sources. 
Those  who  prefer  to  doubt  this  cannot  be  re- 
futed convincingly  by  the  non-christian  sources, 
either  by  their  silence  or  by  their  speaking. 
But  they  can  be  refuted  by  the  Christian 


32  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

sources  apart  from  the  Gospels.  This  I  wish  to 
show  at  the  end  of  this  lecture.  I  refrain  from 
using  Acts,  as  it  is  closely  connected  with 
the  three  synoptic  Gospels;  from  the  epis- 
tles of  James,  Jude,  and  John,  because  they 
do  not  bring  any  convincing  arguments;  from 
Revelation,  because  its  figurative  language  is 
not  suited  for  argumentation;  from  the  second 
epistle  of  Peter,  because,  in  agreement  with 
other  critics,  I  do  not  consider  it  genuine;  and 
from  the  first  Petrine  epistle,  because  there  are 
weighty  reasons  against  assigning  it  to  Peter. 
Thus,  I  confine  myself  to  the  letters  of  Saint 
Paul.  And  even  of  these  I  shall  make  use  of 
only  a  few.  But  I  shall  try  to  give  the  little  I 
have  to  say  in  such  a  manner  that  even  laymen 
can  gain  an  idea  of  the  amount  of  certainty 
which  science  in  this  respect  may  claim. 

It  is  well  known  that  none  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment books  have  come  down  to  us  in  the  original 
of  the  author.  They  share  this  fate  with  all 
books  of  antiquity.  Copies  only  are  preserved, 
which  are  separated  from  the  originals  by  a 
countless  number  of  older  copies.  This  is  quite 
natural.  For  lasting  manuscripts,  written  on 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  33 

parchment,  came  into  use  only  in  the  fourth 
century.  Before  this  time  people  wrote  on  papy- 
rus, and  this  material  is  very  fragile.  We  need, 
therefore,  not  marvel  that  we  possess  only  very 
few  shreds  of  papyrus  with  copies  of  New  Tes- 
tament writings.1  Our  oldest  parchment  man- 
uscripts of  the  whole  New  Testament  date  from 
about  400.  We  are,  however,  carried  much  far- 
ther back  by  the  oldest  translations,  which  are 
naturally  likewise  preserved  only  in  manuscripts, 
and  by  the  more  or  less  copious  quotations  in 
the  oldest  church  writers.  In  this  manner  the 
New  Testament,  as  a  whole,  may  be  traced  back 
as  far  as  about  180  A.  D.,  if  we  ignore  unim- 
portant variations  in  its  contents.  Farther 
back  we  can  trace  only  the  single  groups,  the 
Gospels,  the  epistles  of  Paul,  etc.,  and  ultimately 
only  the  single  writings. 

In  this  respect  we  are  in  an  especially  lucky 
position  as  regards  the  first  epistle  of  Saint  Paul 
to  the  Corinthians.  For  while  the  oldest  post- 
biblical  writers  mostly  weave  passages  from  the 
New  Testament  into  their  works  without  giving 

1  Comp.  C.  R.  Gregory,  Textkritik  des  Neuen  Testaments,  Leipsic, 
1909,  p.  1084. 


34  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  origin,  this  letter  of  Paul's  is  found  expressly 
cited  at  a  very  early  date,  and  actually  in  a  let- 
ter of  the  Roman  community  to  that  of  Corinth, 
written  very  probably  in  the  year  95. 1  This 
letter  in  its  turn  is  used  as  early  as  about  no  in 
a  letter  of  Polycarp,  Bishop  of  Smyrna,  and  this 
letter  of  Polycarp's,  again,  is  known  about  185 
to  Irenaeus,  Bishop  of  Lyons,  a  native  of  Asia 
Minor,  who  had  personal  connections  with  Poly- 
carp.  Irenaeus,  in  his  turn,  with  his  most  famous 
book,  is  made  use  of  by  Tertullian  about  200 
A.  D.,  etc.,  etc.  Thus,  an  unbroken  chain  leads 
us  to  the  time  of  the  oldest  manuscripts.  More- 
over, we  learn  from  a  letter  of  Dionysius,  Bishop 
of  Corinth,  about  180,  that  the  letter  of  the 
Roman  community,  referred  to  above,  had  been 
regularly  read  in  Corinth  during  the  service  from 
olden  times.2  In  short,  the  external  evidence  in 
the  case  of  I  Corinthians  is  convincing  to  a 
degree  that  is  rarely  found  in  antiquity.  Add 
to  this,  that  I  Corinthians  reveals  its  personal 
and  historical  individuality  in  such  a  marked 

1 1  Clm.  47:  "  Take  up  the  epistle  of  the  blessed  Paul  the  apostle. 
What  wrote  he  first  unto  you  in  the  beginning  of  the  gospel?" 
Ed.  J.  B.  Lightfoot,  II,  London,  1890,  pp.  143  and  296. 

2Eusebius,  H.  E.,  4,  23,  n. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  35 

manner  that  the  internal  evidence,  too,  would 
be  conclusive  for  its  genuineness. 

But  if  I  Corinthians  is  undoubtedly  genuine, 
then,  even  excluding  external  evidence,  which, 
by  the  way,  is  not  wanting,  the  same  is  surely 
the  case  with  II  Corinthians,  Romans,  Gala- 
tians,  and  Philippians.  We  cannot  but  recognize 
the  same  author  and  similar  historical  circum- 
stances. The  other  Pauline  letters,  excepting 
the  pastoral  epistles,  I  also  recognize  as  being  gen- 
uine, but  I  make  no  use  of  them  here.  Romans, 
too,  I  shall  leave  aside,  because  Smith1  asserts, 
though  with  unsatisfactory  arguments,  that  it 
is  not  a  Pauline  letter  but  a  later  treatise  which 
employs  old  material  and  together  with  it  was 
dressed  up  as  a  Pauline  letter  to  the  Romans.  In 
reality,  Smith  is  probably  brought  to  this  asser- 
tion because  Romans  i :  3  is  fatal  to  his  theory, 
as  it  says  of  Christ:  He  was  made  of  the  seed  of 
David  according  to  the  flesh.  Even  apart  from 
Romans,  Smith's  view  suffers  shipwreck  on  the 
rock  of  I  Corinthians  and  Galatians.  Also, 
from  Galatians,  it  is  clear  that  Saint  Paul  knows 

1  Der  vorhistorische  Jesus,  Giessen,  1906,  pp.  136-224;  Ecce  Deus, 
p.  165. 


36  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

that  Christ  was  the  seed  of  Abraham  (3  : 16),  that 
he  was  made  of  a  woman  and  made  under  ike  law 
(4: 4).  In  I  Corinthians  he  relates  that  Christ  in 
the  same  night  in  which  he  was  betrayed,  instituted 
the  Lord's  Supper  (11:23  jf.)  5  ne  reminds  the 
Corinthians  of  that  which  he  delivered  unto  them, 
that  Christ  died  for  our  sins  and  that  he  was  buried 
and  that  he  rose  again  (15:3  /.)•  And  incident- 
ally in  I  Corinthians  (9 : 5)  he  shows  that  he 
knows  brothers  of  Jesus  who  travelled  about 
with  their  wives;  and  in  Galatians  (i :  19)  he  tells 
us  that  three  years  after  his  conversion  he  saw 
Peter  and  James,  the  Lord's  brother,  in  Jerusalem. 
Smith  makes  short  work  of  these  passages.  He 
calls  most  of  them  later  interpolations,  and  the 
brothers  of  the  Lord,  for  him,  are  nothing  else 
than  a  class  of  believers  in  the  Messiah  who 
occupied  almost  the  same  position  as  the  apos- 
tles and  were  distinguished  by  the  honorable 
name  "Brothers  of  the  Lord"  or  "Brothers  of 
Jesus."  A  specialist  for  nervous  diseases,  in 
no  wise  prejudiced,  whom  I  told  about  these 
shallow  arguments  of  Smith,  was  of  opinion  that 
such  argumentation  could  only  be  understood 
from  a  psychopathic  point  of  view.  I  de- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  37 

fended  Smith  against  this  accusation,  for  church 
history  gives  us  hundreds  of  examples  of  sound- 
headed  men  who,  when  wishing  to  defend  a 
favorite  hypothesis  which  they  believe  in  danger, 
do  not  behave  otherwise  than  a  drowning  man 
catching  at  a  straw.  But  so  much  is  certain: 
such  fancies  need  not  be  discussed.  The  text 
of  Josephus  could  easily  have  been  interpolated 
in  the  two  hundred  years  between  its  origin  and 
Eusebius's  time;  but  in  the  case  of  the  Pauline 
epistles,  especially  I  Corinthians,  whose  use  we 
can  trace  nearly  from  the  time  when  it  was 
written  till  the  time  to  which  textual  criticism 
leads  us,  such  a  statement  is  folly,  is  scientific 
bad-behavior.  And  to  change  the  brothers  of 
Jesus  into  "Brethren  in  the  Lord"  is  but  a  con- 
fession of  hopeless  perplexity.  For  the  existence 
of  these  brothers  of  Jesus  suffices  to  wreck  the 
fantastic  edifice  of  W.  B.  Smith  in  spite  of  all  his 
learning.  Even  apart  from  these  Pauline  pas- 
sages we  have  sufficient  evidence  for  the  existence 
of  brothers  of  Jesus.  The  Gospels  know  them.1 
Hegesippus,  about  180,  acquainted  with  Jewish- 

1  Matt.  12 :  46 ;  13:55;  Mark  3:32;  6:3;  Luke  8  : 19 ;  John 
7=3,  5- 


38  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Christian  traditions,  was  interested  in  their  de- 
scendants and  relatives,  in  the  family  of  the  Lord, 
as  he  says.1  Even  as  late  as  about  230  the 
relatives  of  our  Lord  according  to  the  fleshy  the  so- 
called  Desposynoi,  i.  e.,  who  belonged  to  the 
Master,  were  well  known  to  Julius  Africanus.2 
These  "  brothers  of  the  Lord  "  were  changed 
to  "  cousins  "  as  late  as  the  fourth  century,  by 
the  development  of  the  veneration  for  the  Virgin 
Mary.  Circumspect  scholars,  therefore,  do  not 
need  the  testimony  of  Saint  Paul  in  order  to  be 
convinced  that  Jesus  had  brothers,  and,  there- 
fore, lived  as  a  man  in  this  world  of  ours.  Yet 
it  is  fortunate  that  the  personal  acquaintance  of 
Paul  with  James,  the  brother  of  the  Lord,  does 
not  leave  any  doubt  on  this  point. 

And  it  is  not  only  the  fact  that  Jesus  lived  a 
human  life  which  is  confirmed  by  Saint  Paul, 
who  a  few  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus  changed 
from  a  persecutor  to  a  believer.  For  Ernest 
Renan,  the  well-known  author  of  a  life  of  Jesus 
which  surely  does  not  show  belief  in  Christ,  has 
very  correctly  said  that  we  can  give  a  brief 
sketch  of  the  life  of  Jesus  by  the  help  alone  of 

1  Eusebius,  H.  E.,  3,  20. — 2  Eusebius,  //.  E.,  I,  7,  espec.  I,  7, 14. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  39 

the  materials  found  in  the  Pauline  letters  to 
the  Romans,  Corinthians,  and  Galatians.1 

Hence,  the  statement  that  Jesus  was  only  a 
deity,  falsely  changed  into  a  man  by  tradition, 
is  simply  disproved  by  what  we  know  for  certain 
about  Jesus  from  Saint  Paul. 

It  is  another  question  whether  Smith  is  right 
in  rejecting  the  opposite  statement  that  Jesus 
was  only  a  man  whom  later  times  erroneously 
elevated  beyond  human  measure.  This  ques- 
tion will  occupy  us  in  the  three  following  lect- 
ures. 

*E.  Renan,  Histoire  du  peuple  a"  Israel,  V,  Paris,  1893,  p.  416, 
not.  i:  Paul  croyait  certainement,  que  Jesus  avait  existe.  On 
pourrait  faire  une  petite  "vie  de  Jesus"  avec  les  epitres  aux  Ro- 
mains,  aux  Corinthiens,  aux  Galates  et  avec  1'epitre  aux  Hebreux, 
qui  n'est  pas  de  saint  Paul,  mais  est  bien  ancienne. 


II 

THE  LIBERAL  JESUS-PICTURE 

TN  my  first  lecture  I  started  with  showing 
the  contrast  between  the  liberal  German 
research  on  the  life  of  Jesus  and  the  theory 
of  your  countryman,  William  Benjamin  Smith. 
Smith  himself,  as  we  saw,  formulated  the  con- 
trast in  the  following  manner:  the  liberal  Ger- 
man theology  tries  to  understand  the  life  of 
Jesus  as  a  purely  human  life;  he  himself,  on  the 
contrary,  is  convinced  that  Jesus  was  originally 
a  purely  divine  being  and  that  the  stories  of  his 
human  life  were  merely  later  fictiojis.  Only  by 
this  assumption  does  the  rise  of  Christianity  ap- 
pear to  him  to  be  comprehensible.  We  saw  that 
this  theory  of  Smith's  proved  to  be  untenable 
even  if  we  do  not  examine  it  in  detail.  Now  the 
question  rises  whether  his  judgment  about  the 
purely  human  conception  of  Jesus  is  more  ten- 
able. 

It  is  not  Smith  alone  who  asserts  that  the 

40 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH  ?  41 

German  liberal  Jesus-research — for  brevity's  sake 
I  shall  henceforth  use  this  expression  instead  of 
research  on  the  life  of  Jesus — cannot  hold  its 
position.  Nor  is  it  only  the  older  school  which 
shares  in  this  criticism. 

Five  years  ago  there  appeared  in  Germany  a 
singular,  one-sided,  but  learned  and  eminently 
ingenious  history  of  the  German  Jesus-research, 
a  work  which  Dr.  Sanday,  of  Oxford,  told  me 
he  considers  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  im- 
portant German  books  he  knows.1  The  author 
is  a  young  German  theologian,  Albert  Schweit- 
zer (born  1875),  lecturer  at  the  University  of 
Strassburg,  and  the  title  of  the  work  is  From 
Reimarus  to  Wrede,  a  History  of  the  Research 
on  the  Life  of  Jesus?  W.  B.  Smith  could  not 
have  been  acquainted  with  this  work,  when  in 
1906  he  published  his  book  on  the  Pre-christian 
Jesus,  and  in  his  new  book,  Ecce  Deus,  he  also 
shows  no  knowledge  of  it.  At  any  rate,  Smith's 
judgment  about  the  German  Jesus-research  is 
independent  of  Schweitzer,  and  the  conceptions 
of  Jesus  by  Smith  and  Schweitzer  differ  as  widely 

1  Comp.  W.  Sanday,  The  Life  of  Jesus  in  Recent  Research,  Oxford, 
*9°7>  P-  44  /• — 2  Tubingen,  1906. 


42  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

as  possible.  For  it  does  not  occur  to  Schweitzer 
to  deny,  as  Smith  does,  the  historicity  of  Jesus. 
Jesus,  according  to  Schweitzer,  was  a  man  who 
played  his  part  in  history,  a  man  who  was  filled 
with  erroneous  thoughts  of  Messianic  hope  and 
who  was  shipwrecked  together  with  his  hopes. 
Schweitzer,  therefore,  is  one  of  the  extremest 
supporters  of  those  liberal  views  against  which 
W.  B.  Smith  polemizes  with  great  vivacity.  And 
yet  the  assertions  of  Schweitzer  and  Smith  have 
many  points  in  common.  What  I  said  above  in 
the  last  lecture,  about  Smith  and  Arthur  Drews 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  school  of  comparative 
religious  history  on  the  other,  holds  good  here, 
too:  extremes  meet.  And  here,  too,  this  meet- 
ing of  extremes  is  very  significant  for  the  present 
situation  of  the  Jesus-research. 

Smith  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  efforts  of  lib- 
eral German  theology  to  describe  a  purely  hu- 
man life  of  Jesus  have  been  futile.  He  says  that, 
in  spite  of  all  deeply  grounded  knowledge  and 
talented  constructions,  none  of  these  efforts  have 
been  crowned  with  success.  None  of  them  lasted 
longer  than  a  very  short  time,  and  that,  too, 
only  in  a  very  small  circle.  The  picture  of  Jesus 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  43 

which  has  been  painted  by  liberal  German  the- 
ology, the  "liberal  Jesus-picture,"  so  to  speak, 
is  for  him  only  a  chimera,  a  creation  of  fancy,  in 
reality  unimaginable,  and  completely  lacking  in 
historical  value  and  justification.  The  ingenious 
biographers  of  Jesus,  he  says,  have  stared  into 
the  crystal  sea  of  the  Gospels  and  every  one  of 
them  has  seen  his  own  face  mirrored  in  these  calm 
depths.  Similar  words  are  used  by  Schweitzer. 
The  last  chapter  of  his  book,  where  he  deals 
with  the  results  of  the  Jesus-research,  opens  with 
the  following  passage:  Those  who  like  to  speak 
of  a  negative  theology  have  no  great  difficulty 
here.  There  is  nothing  more  negative  than  the  re- 
suit  of  the  Jesus-research.  Such  a  Jesus  as  is 
painted  by  this  research,  a  Jesus  who  appeared  as 
the  Messiah,  preached  the  morality  of  the  King- 
dom of  God,  and  died  in  order  to  sanction  his  work, 
never  existed.  His  figure  is  a  fanciful  picture 
sketched  by  Rationalism,  revivified  by  Liberalism, 
wrongfully  represented  by  modern  theology  as  the 
result  of  historical  science.  This  figure  has  not 
been  destroyed  from  without,  but  has .  collapsed, 
being  shattered  and  torn  asunder  by  the  real  his- 
torical problems  which  arose  one  after  the  other. 


44  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Schweitzer,  as  well  as  Smith,  brands  the  biog- 
raphers of  Jesus  as  false  psychologists,  and,  like 
Smith,  accuses  them  of  having  been  guided  in 
painting  their  pictures  of  Jesus  more  by  their 
own  personal  ideals  than  by  history. 

Now,  the  question  is,  whether  Smith  and 
Schweitzer  are  right  in  that  which  they  have  in 
common.  Can  we  agree  with  their  judgment 
about  the  liberal  Jesus-research  of  our  day, 
which  looks  on  Jesus  as  a  purely  human  being? 
Has  this  research  work,  extending  over  so  many 
years,  this  work  for  which  both  Schweitzer  and 
Smith  have  words  of  the  highest,  almost  dithy- 
rambic,  praise,  really  led  to  no  tenable  results? 

With  this  question  we  shall  occupy  ourselves 
in  this  and  the  next  two  lectures. 

Our  first  task  will  be — and  that  is  the  subject 
of  my  lecture  to-day — to  gain  a  survey  over  the 
German  Jesus-research.  This  survey  must  be 
such  as  to  make  the  judgments  of  Smith  and 
Schweitzer  intelligible.  We  can  and  must  pass 
over  in  silence  those  scholars  who,  as,  e.  g.,  Nean- 
der1  and  Tholuck2  seventy  years  ago,  and  at  the 

1  A.  W.  Neander,  Das  Leben  Jesu  Christi,  Hamburg,  1837. 

2  A.  Tholuck,  Die  Glaubwiirdigkeit  der  evangelischen  Geschichte, 
Hamburg,  1837. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  45 

present  day  Bernhard  Weiss,1  in  Berlin,  and 
others,  see  not  merely  a  man  in  Jesus.  Nor  is 
it  my  duty  to  give  all  details  of  that  line  of  the 
development  of  the  Jesus-research  with  which  we 
have  to  deal,  that  is  to  say,  that  which  regards 
Jesus  as  a  purely  human  being.  That  would 
only  confuse  and  weary  you  with  a  host  of  names. 
My  aim  must  be  to  emphasize  the  principal 
phases  of  the  development  and  to  make  intel- 
ligible the  genesis  of  the  liberal  Jesus-picture, 
opposed  so  energetically  by  Smith  and  Schweit- 
zer, and  to  characterize  the  present  situation  of 
the  liberal  Jesus-research. 

The  liberal  German  Jesus-research  begins 
under  English  deistic  influence  in  a  very  rad- 
ical manner  with  Hermann  Samuel  Reimarus 
(t  1768),  the  author  of  the  so-called  Wolffen- 
biittel-Fragments,  edited,  as  we  saw,2  by  Les- 
sing.  To  Reimarus  Jesus  appeared  wholly  a 
man^  who  belonged  completely  to  the  Jewish 
people.  Jesus  considered  himself  the  Messiah 
in  the  sense  of  the  politically  colored  Messianic 
hopes  of  his  time.  He  foretold  the  close  ap- 

1  B.  Weiss,  Das  Leben  Jesu,  2  vols.,  ist  edition,  Berlin,  1882. 

2  Above,  p.  3. 


46  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

proach  of  the  Messianic  kingdom  and  wished 
to  prepare  his  countrymen  for  this  approach 
by  his  moral  teaching.  He  did  not  destroy  the 
Jewish  law  nor  did  he  propose  new  articles  of 
faith  or  institute  new  ceremonies.  For  bap- 
tism, as  long  as  Jesus  lived,  was  nothing  but  a 
preparation  for  the  Messianic  kingdom  already 
practised  by  John  the  Baptist;  and  the  Last 
Supper  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples  was  only  an 
anticipation  of  the  Passover,  which  was  to  be 
celebrated  on  the  following  day.  Jesus  was  a 
Jewish  Messiah,  nothing  more.  As  such  he 
entered  Jerusalem,  as  such  he  cleansed  the  tem- 
ple and  harangued  against  the  Scribes  and  the 
Pharisees.  But  his  Messianic  hopes  were  bur- 
ied by  his  capture  and  crucifixion.  His  aims, 
namely,  to  found  a  worldly  Messianic  kingdom 
and  to  deliver  the  Jews  from  their  unhappy 
political  situation,  proved  abortive.  His  last 
words:  My  God,  my  Gody  why  hast  thou  for- 
saken me!  gave  evidence  of  his  being  aware  of 
this  failure.  But  the  disciples  stole  his  corpse 
and  within  a  few  days  they  created  their  new 
system,  which  did  not  harmonize  with  the  orig- 
inal system  of  Jesus  once  shared  by  them,  but 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  47 

the  system  of  a  Saviour  who  died  for  the  sins  of 
mankind  and  rose  from  the  dead.  According 
to  this  system  they  disposed  and  fabricated  the 
history  now  found  in  the  Gospels.  But  a  keen- 
sighted  eye,  in  the  opinion  of  Reimarus,  can 
recognize  in  the  Gospels  the  lines  of  the  first  sys- 
tem under  the  colors  laid  on  by  the  second. 

The  inconsiderate  radicalism  of  these  thoughts 
has  always  been  applauded  by  similarly  inclined 
men.  Schweitzer  praises  Reimarus  above  all 
for  having  done  justice  to  the  Messianic  escha- 
tological  element,  though  he  considers  him  mis- 
taken in  his  political  conception  of  it.  Neverthe- 
less, all  scholars  since  Reimarus  are  unanimous 
in  thinking  that  Reimarus  in  his  attempt  to  un- 
derstand the  life  of  Jesus  as  a  merely  human 
one  has  chosen  an  impossible  way.  For  the 
deception  practised,  according  to  Reimarus,  by 
the  disciples,  and  the  complete  opposition  be- 
tween their  thoughts  and  those  of  Jesus — be- 
tween their  second  system,  as  Reimarus  says, 
and  the  first — make  the  beginnings  of  Christian- 
ity an  insolvable  riddle. 

Indeed,  the  influence  of  Reimarus  was  at 
first  very  small.  Of  course,  the  theologians  of 


48  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  rationalistic  period,  whose  picture  of  Christ 
is  the  second  type  to  be  mentioned,  agreed  with 
Reimarus  in  the  purely  human  conception  of 
Jesus.  But  they  thought  they  could  do  without 
the  ugly  judgments  about  the  Gospels  and  about 
the  first  disciples,  which  gave  the  conception  of 
Reimarus  such  an  offending  and  odious  char- 
acter. What  the  Gospels  relate  is,  as  far  as  the 
external  facts  are  concerned,  essentially  his- 
torical for  the  rationalistic  theologians.  But 
the  evangelists,  and  before  them  already  the 
first  disciples,  did  not  see  how  the  facts  were 
produced  in  a  natural  manner.  The  stories  that 
Jesus  raised  some  persons  from  the  dead  must 
be  interpreted  as  referring  originally  but  to  a 
wakening  from  a  condition  of  trance.  And  in  the 
same  manner  Jesus,  too,  is  to  be  regarded  as  not 
having  really  died  on  the  cross.  After  having 
recovered  his  strength  in  the  grave,  he  had  in- 
tercourse with  his  disciples  for  forty  days  at 
such  intervals  as  his  weak  state  of  health  al- 
lowed. Then  he  died;  where  and  how,  the  dis- 
ciples did  not  know.  Hence  the  stories  of  the 
appearances  of  the  crucified  Christ  are  through- 
out historical.  The  last  parting  of  Jesus  was 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  49 

naturally  interpreted  by  the  disciples  as  his  as- 
cension. But  miracles  did  not  take  place  either 
here  or  elsewhere  in  the  life  of  Jesus.  The  mir- 
acle was  he  himself,  his  character,  pure,  sunny, 
and  holy,  and  yet  genuinely  human  and  capable 
of  imitation  by  men.  The  eschatological  sayings 
of  Jesus  were  rendered  appreciable  to  enlight- 
ened thought,  partly  by  means  of  an  attenuat- 
ing interpretation,  partly  by  the  hypothesis  that 
Jesus  accommodated  himself  to  the  ideas  of  the 
people. 

This  conception  of  the  life  of  Jesus  continued 
to  live  among  the  clergy  in  a  few  cases  as  far  as 
into  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  had  for  a  long  time  its  friends  among  the 
more  enlightened  middle  classes.  For  theologi- 
cal science  and  the  well-instructed  laymen  it  was 
made  impossible  as  early  as  seven  years  after 
the  appearance  of  the  standard  work  of  this  type, 
the  Life  of  Jesus,  published,  in  1828,  by  Heinrich 
Eberhard  Gottlob  Paulus,  professor  at  Heidel- 
berg. It  was  David  Friedrich  Strauss  who,  in 
his  famous  Life  of  Jesus  of  1835,  criticised  these 
rationalistic  constructions  in  the  keenest  and 
most  convincing  manner.  It  was  not  difficult 


50  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

to  show  that  here  the  Gospels  were  not  done  jus- 
tice to,  and  that  the  events  which,  according 
to  the  rationalistic  interpretation,  lay  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  evangelical  stories  were  not  capable  of 
explaining  that  which  actually  is  narrated.  This, 
too,  was  evident — that  the  character  of  Jesus  as 
conceived  by  the  rationalists  was  not  such  as  to 
allow  his  disciples  to  believe  in  miracles  where 
none  had  occurred.  And  it  was  not  by  his  crit- 
icism alone  that  David  Friedrich  Strauss  marked 
a  new  stage  in  the  Jesus-research.  It  was  chiefly 
his  criticism  of  the  narrations  themselves  that 
was  epoch-making,  and  that  criticism  formed 
the  main  contents  of  his  book.  Apart  from  the 
introduction  and  extensive  closing  remarks,  the 
two  volumes  consist  merely  of  loosely  connected 
chapters  which,  bit  by  bit,  try  to  prove  the 
evangelical  history  to  be  unhistorical.  Strauss 
attempted  to  gain  this  result  by  means  of  myth- 
ical interpretation.  Myths  are  something  other 
than  fabulous  traditions.  All  historical  tradi- 
tion, the  farther  it  reaches,  is  more  and  more 
contaminated  by  unhistorical  traits,  exaggera- 
tions, and  amplifications;  but  the  essential  core 
is  a  real  historical  fact.  The  myth,  too,  may 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  51 

start  from  a  historical  event  or  a  historical  per- 
son, but  its  real  subject  is  never  a  historical  fact 
but  an  idea;  the  myth  is  a  thought  clothed  in 
the  garb  of  history.  Such  myths  are  found  by 
Strauss  in  the  New  Testament.  He  does  not  deny 
that  these  myths  had  one  starting-point  in  the 
grandeur  of  Jesus'  character.  But  a  second  is  to 
be  found  in  the  ideas  of  a  Messiah  which  existed 
among  the  Jews  before  Jesus.  And  this  second 
starting-point  is  for  Strauss  the  more  important. 
For,  whereas  the  first  is,  according  to  Strauss,  a 
little-known  and,  therefore,  constant  factor,  it 
is  the  second  which  brings  variety  into  his  de- 
ductions. What  was  expected  of  the  Messiah 
was  told  of  Jesus.  That  is  the  song  which  is 
sung  by  Strauss  with  continual  variations.  The 
New  Testament  stories  are  fictions  which  express 
the  idea  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah.  The  his- 
torical residuum  which  is  left  by  this  interpre- 
tation is  very  small.  Strauss  nowhere  collects 
it;  we  must  gather  it  from  occasional  notices. 
Jesus  grew  up  at  Nazareth,  was  baptized  by 
John,  considered  himself  the  Messiah,  wandered 
about  Palestine  with  disciples,  contended  with 
the  Pharisees,  and  succumbed  to  the  enmity  of 


52  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  latter.  There  is  also,  according  to  Strauss, 
much  spurious  matter  in  the  words  of  Jesus, 
transmitted  to  us  by  the  Gospels.  Yet  he  ac- 
knowledges some  authentic  material  in  the  great 
groups  of  sayings  in  Saint  Matthew,  especially 
in  the  sermon  on  the  mount.  But  he  makes 
little  positive  use  of  these  sayings.  His  deduc- 
tions exhaust  themselves,  for  the  most  part,  in 
the  examination  of  the  reliability  of  the  material 
handed  down  to  us.  Here,  too,  he  remains  es- 
sentially the  critic. 

Nevertheless  Strauss's  Life  of  Jesus  marks  a 
real  progress  which  must  be  admitted  even  by 
those  scholars  who  do  not  share  his  views.  By 
his  efforts  the  unhistorical  interpretations  of  the 
rationalists  were  swept  away.  And  an  earnest 
attempt  was  made  to  understand  the  genesis  of 
the  New  Testament  stories  without  the  odious 
incredibilities  into  which  Reimarus  had  been 
led.  This  attempt  also  failed,  as  is  generally 
conceded  by  later  scholars.  The  evangelical 
history  in  its  entirety  cannot  be  understood  as 
a  garland  of  myths  produced  only  by  the  Mes- 
sianic belief.  Strauss  did  not  occupy  himself 
with  literary  criticism  sufficiently  to  enable  him 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  53 

to  see  that  the  narratives  of  the  Gospels  were  too 
dissimilar  to  be  treated  alike.  Lastly,  liberal 
theology,  too,  has  acknowledged  that  that  which 
the  Gospels  narrate  is  historical  to  a  greater  ex- 
tent than  Strauss  had  assumed.  Nevertheless 
Strauss,  as  Schweitzer1  justly  remarks,  was  not 
only  the  destroyer  of  former  solutions  of  the 
Jesus-problem,  but  was  also  the  prophet  of  a 
new  science,  the  science  of  modern  Jesus-re- 
search. Strauss  himself  had  a  presentiment  of 
this  fact.  When  a  friend  asked  him  to  sketch  a 
definite  picture  of  Jesus  and  to  show  what  his- 
torical remains  were  left  after  his  criticism,  he 
granted  the  justice  of  this  request,  but  declared 
at  the  same  time  that  he  for  himself  could  not 
at  that  period  fulfil  it.  In  the  darkness,  said  he, 
which  has  been  produced  by  the  extinction  of  all 
historical  lights,  one  can  only  gradually  regain 
one *s  sight  and  learn  to  discern  individual  ob- 
jects.2 It  was  his  hope  that  future  research  would 
be  more  fruitful  in  this  respect.  And  this  has 
come  to  pass.  Strauss  bequeathed  to  his  suc- 
cessors, aside  from  the  elimination  of  the  super- 

1P.  94. — aTo  his  friend  Binder,  12  Mai  1836,  in  Th.  Zieg- 
ler's  David  Friedrich  Strauss,  I,  Strassburg,  1908,  p.  171. 


54  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

natural,  practised  already  by  Reimarus  and  the 
rationalists,  the  conviction  that  the  so-called 
Gospel  of  Saint  John,  in  comparison  with  the 
three  others,  was  of  little  value  for  a  historical 
life  of  Jesus. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  Strauss  did  not  find 
direct  successors  within  the  next  twenty  years 
or  more.  For  the  next  phase  of  liberal  German 
theology,  which  received  its  character  from  the 
historical  school  of  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur, 
of  Tubingen  (f  1860),  scarcely  brought  direct 
results  for  the  Jesus-research.  That  was  the 
consequence  of  the  conception  of  the  earliest 
Christian  history  peculiar  to  the  Tubingen 
school.  Here  the  Catholic  church  of  the  closing 
second  century  was  considered  as  the  ultimate 
result  of  a  long  controversy  between  the  Jew- 
ish Christianity  of  the  first  apostles  and  their 
followers  and  the  liberal  party  of  Paul.  In 
the  course  of  this  controversy,  which  gradually 
smoothed  down  the  contrast  of  the  respective 
parties,  all  New  Testament  books  were  regarded 
by  Baur  as  having  played  their  part.  They  were 
considered  as  having  been  written  for  the  pur- 
pose of  maintaining  partial  views,  at  first  unre- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  55 

strictedly  but  then  more  or  less  with  a  concil- 
iatory spirit.  About  Jesus  little  was  said.  His 
person  stood  in  the  darkness  which  preceded  the 
controversy.  His  character  was  only  vaguely 
seen  in  the  Gospels,  which  were  considered  as 
quite  later  writings,  treating  their  material  in  a 
by  no  means  impartial  way.  Yet  the  Tubingen 
school  has  indirectly  promoted  the  task  pro- 
posed by  Strauss.  Firstly,  the  literary  criticism 
of  the  sources,  neglected  by  Strauss,  was  taken 
in  hand.  Later  science,  it  is  true,  did  not  ac- 
cept to  a  large  extent  that  which  the  Tubingen 
school  considered  as  being  proved.  Neverthe- 
less the  Tubingen  school  has  inaugurated  the 
modern  biblical  criticism.  Secondly,  the  Tu- 
bingen school  justified  in  the  eyes  of  many 
scholars  the  instinctive  distrust  felt  by  Strauss 
for  the  fourth  Gospel.  Till  this  day  the  position 
of  most  liberal  theologians  with  regard  to  the 
Gospel  of  Saint  John  is  to  some  extent  condi- 
tioned by  the  judgment  of  Baur.  Lastly,  the 
Tubingen  school  brought  to  light  the  serious- 
ness of  a  question  only  touched  upon  by  Strauss, 
the  question  whether  Jesus  clung  to  Jewish  par- 
ticularism or  whether  he  himself  inaugurated 


56  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  universalism  of  later  Christianity.  The 
most  important  of  these  three  points  is  the  first: 
the  Tubingen  school  stimulated  serious  work  in 
the  field  of  New  Testament  criticism. 

In  the  generation  after  Strauss  this  work  had 
good  results  in  respect  to  the  synoptic  Gospels, 
in  Strauss'  opinion  the  main  sources  for  the  life 
of  Jesus.  These  results  not  only  deviated  from 
Baur  in  giving  up  step  by  step  his  dates  for  the 
Gospels,  but  also  produced  a  new  hypothesis 
about  their  genesis.  Baur  adhered  to  the  hy- 
pothesis of  Griessbach  (f  1812)  who  considered 
Saint  Mark  as  an  epitomizer  of  the  two  other 
synoptic  Gospels.  Then  (after  1838)  arose  the 
hypothesis  that  our  second  Gospel,  or  a  similar 
work  of  the  same  author,  had  been  used  by  the 
other  synoptics  and,  therefore,  was  the  oldest 
Gospel.  Besides  Saint  Mark  theological  science 
recognized  a  second  source,  used  by  the  first 
and  third  evangelists,  which  contained  prin- 
cipally sayings  of  Jesus. 

Before  these  results  were  widely  accepted, 
Theodor  Keim,  of  Zurich  (f  at  Giessen,  1878), 
holding  modified  Tubingen  views,  published  in 
1 86 1  an  outline  of  The  Human  Development  of 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  57 

Jesus,1  which  may  be  called  the  first  sketch  of 
his  later  Life  of  Jesus,2  the  first  sketch  also  of 
the  liberal  Jesus-picture.  Keim,  it  is  true,  con- 
sidered Saint  Matthew  and  not  Saint  Mark  the 
oldest  evangelist.  Nevertheless  his  historical 
description  has  great  likeness  to  that  of  the 
later  liberal  theologians  who  built  upon  Saint 
Mark,  for  the  sequence  of  events  in  Saint  Mat- 
thew is  nearly  the  same  as  in  Saint  Mark.  I 
shall  not  separate  Keim's  Outline  from  his  later 
work  nor  yet  do  I  intend  to  give  a  summary  of  his 
Life  of  Jesus.  Not  only  because  time  is  short, 
but  still  more  because  it  would  not  do  justice 
to  Keim;  for  no  brief  summary  can  give  an  idea 
of  the  charm  of  his  descriptive  powers,  nor  could 
it  show  that  he  frequently  reveals  in  the  purely 
human  Jesus  a  majesty  which  agrees  better 
with  the  author's  faith  than  with  his  histor- 
ical research.  I  therefore  confine  myself  to  laying 
before  you  some  characteristics  of  his  conception 
of  the  life  of  Jesus  which  are  important  for  our 
subject  because  they  were  of  great  influence  for 

1Th.  Keim,  Die  menschliche  Entwicklung  Jesu  Christi.  Aka- 
demische  Antrittsrede  am  17  December,  1860,  Zurich,  1861. 

2Th.  Keim,  Die  Geschichte  Jesu  von  Nazara,  3  vols.,  Zurich, 
1867-72. 


58  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

that  conception  of  Jesus  which  is  understood 
when  we  speak  of  the  "liberal  Jesus-picture." 

Firstly,  the  Johannine  account  which  men- 
tions, as  will  be  seen  more  accurately  later,  many 
journeys  of  Jesus  to  Jerusalem,  and,  therefore, 
divides  his  public  life  between  Galilee  and 
Judea,  is  put  aside  as  being  unhistorical;  Jesus 
worked  only  in  Galilee  and  the  neighborhood 
until  he  journeyed  to  Jerusalem  to  the  "  Death 
Passover/*  as  Keim  calls  it. 

Secondly,  where  Saint  Luke  diverges  from 
the  other  synoptics  Keim  follows  the  latter.  He 
dismisses  the  appearances  of  the  risen  Jesus  in 
Saint  Luke,  and  even  the  appearance  to  the 
women  at  Jerusalem  related  by  the  first  Gospel, 
as  being  unhistorical.  Keim,  as  well  as  later 
liberal  biographers  of  Jesus,  building  upon  Saint 
Mark,  knows  only  of  appearances  in  Galilee. 
The  disciples,  he  thinks,  fled  to  Galilee  imme- 
diately after  the  capture  of  their  Master. 

Thirdly,  the  stories  of  the  childhood  in  the 
first  and  third  Gospels  are  also  put  aside.  Yet 
much  is  told  about  the  development  of  Jesus  on 
the  ground  of  conclusions  from  his  later  life. 

Fourthly,  at  the  baptism  by  John,  Jesus  be- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  59 

came  conscious  of  his  Messianic  calling,  and  af- 
ter the  imprisonment  of  the  Baptist  he  con- 
sidered that  his  hour  had  come  and  appeared 
publicly  in  Galilee  as  a  teacher. 

Fifthly,  there  followed  a  short  period  of  only 
four  months  of  happy  activity  in  Galilee,  the 
"Galilean  Spring/'  as  it  has  been  called  by  Keim, 
and  often  since  by  many  others.  The  main  sub- 
ject of  Jesus'  preaching  at  this  time  was,  accord- 
ing to  Keim,  the  kingdom  of  God.  Jesus  did  not 
exclude  the  Jewish  ideas  of  a  supernatural  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom  at  the  end  of  this  world,  but 
he  laid  stress  upon  the  spiritual  and  moral  char- 
acter of  this  kingdom  and  always  dismissed  all 
thoughts  of  an  earthly  Messiah.  Nor  did  he  de- 
clare himself  to  be  the  Messiah  in  this  Galilean 
period.  Keim  allows  that  Jesus,  besides  his 
preaching,  healed  many  sick  people,  but  he  does 
not  understand  this  in  the  sense  of  supernatural 
miracles.  In  stories  which  cannot  be  naturally 
explained,  as  for  instance  the  story  of  the  rais- 
ing of  Jairus's  daughter,  he  sees  an  exaggeration 
of  the  tradition. 

Sixthly,  the  continuation  of  this  activity  in 
Galilee  was  made  impossible  to  Jesus  by  the 


60  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

increasing  enmity  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees. 
After  the  execution  of  the  Baptist  he  felt  him- 
self forced  out  of  Galilee.  His  wanderings  to 
Bethsaida,  to  Gadara,  to  the  confines  of  Tyre, 
and  to  Caesarea  Philippi  are  "ways  of  flight/' 
as  Keim  says.  On  these  wanderings  the  resolve 
to  give  his  life  another  turn  ripens  within  him. 
He  recognizes  that  he  must  in  Jerusalem  oppose 
his  enemies  with  a  revelation  of  his  Messianic 
dignity.  The  confession  of  Peter  at  Caesarea 
Philippi,  Thou  art  the  Christ,  is  the  turning-point. 
Jesus  now  begins  to  prophesy  his  Passion  and 
then  he  sets  out  for  Jerusalem. 

Seventhly,  he  there  reveals  himself  as  the 
Messiah,  first  by  his  entrance  and  afterward  by 
cleansing  the  temple  and  contending  with  the 
Pharisees.  But  he  soon  sees  that  his  way  leads 
to  his  end,  and  in  the  idea  that  his  death  would 
be  an  atonement,  a  sacrifice  constituting  a  new 
covenant,  his  thoughts  of  death,  at  first  rest- 
less and  hesitating,  ultimately  found  peace. 

Finally,  we  may  remark  that  Keim,  in  the 
framework  of  the  history  he  tells,  has  great 
knowledge  of  things  never  related  by  the  sources. 
He  knows  how  Jesus  was  affected  by  the  execu- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  61 

tion  of  the  Baptist.  He  interprets  the  wander- 
ings outside  Galilee  as  "ways  of  flight,"  though 
no  source  tells  us  anything  of  this  kind.  He  sees 
in  Jesus  at  this  time  the  ripening  of  the  thought 
that  his  activity  must  in  the  future  be  of  another 
kind.  He  knows  how  in  his  restless  striving 
after  light  and  in  his  stormy  and  feverish  groping 
there  rose  in  Jesus,  though  not  quite  on  the  level 
of  his  former  ideas,  the  thought  that  his  death 
would  be  the  sacrifice  of  the  New  Covenant. 

Already  Keim's  Outline,  of  1860,  was,  in 
spite  of  its  small  dimensions,  regarded  by  Hein- 
rich  Holtzmann  in  1863  as  a  work  as  useful  as 
any  other  of  the  period  since  Strauss.  Indeed, 
Holtzmann,  together  with  Bernhard  Weiss  the 
most  successful  defender  of  the  priority  of  Saint 
Mark,  has,  in  spite  of  this  divergence  from  Keim, 
been  strongly  influenced  by  him  in  his  concep- 
tion of  the  life  of  Jesus.  But  even  before  Keim 
had  published  his  great  work,  Holtzmann  in  his 
book  on  the  synoptic  Gospels1  in  1863  gave  a 
sketch  of  the  life  of  Jesus2  which,  perhaps,  more 
than  Keim's  work  influenced  the  views  of  liberal 


*H.  J.  Holtzmann,  Die  synoptischfn  Evangelien,  Leipsic,  1863. 
2L.  c.,  pp.  468-496. 


62  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

German  theologians.  His  reconstruction  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  is  in  all  essential  points  the  same  as 
Keim's.  The  above-mentioned  characteristics 
in  Keim  suit  Holtzmann  too.  Holtzmann,  it  is 
true,  is  more  reserved  in  his  construction.  He 
therefore  criticises  some  points  in  Keim's  de- 
velopment of  Jesus.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  his 
greater  trust  in  Saint  Mark  reveals  to  him  many 
details  more  accurately  than  Keim  saw  them. 
Holtzmann  believes  he  can  distinguish  no  less 
than  seven  phases  of  the  public  life  of  Jesus  in 
Galilee.  It  is,  therefore,  very  significant  that 
Holtzmann  criticises  the  judgment  of  the  famous 
historian,  Barthold  Georg  Niebuhr,  who,  in 
1812,  thought  it  impossible  to  sketch  a  critically 
tenable  history  of  Jesus.  Such  a  judgment,  said 
Holtzmann,1  could  now,  fifty  years  after  Nie- 
buhr, only  be  regarded  as  a  prejudice.  In  fact, 
it  was  the  opinion  of  liberal  German  theology 
that  a  reliable  knowledge  of  the  life  of  Jesus, 
based  on  Saint  Mark,  had  been  attained.  Keim 
and  Holtzmann  have,  in  connection  with  earlier 
and  later  research,  drawn  the  outline  of  the 
Jesus-picture  which  for  more  than  a  generation 

1  L.  c.,  p.  497. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  63 

was  considered  by  liberal  theology  to  be  the  pict- 
ure of  the  historical  Jesus. 

Of  course,  the  pictures  painted  by  liberal  the- 
ology down  to  the  end  of  the  century  are  not 
wholly  identical.  On  the  one  side,  even  in  Saint 
Mark  unhistorical  traits  were  found;  on  the 
other,  the  trust  in  his  narration  was  so  great  that 
rationalistic  interpretation  revived,  so  that  the 
frame  remained  intact,  whereas  the  picture  was 
retouched  in  a  rationalistic  manner.  On  the 
one  side,  only  the  details  of  the  prophecies  of 
Jesus'  passion  and  resurrection  were  criticised; 
on  the  other,  such  utterances  of  Jesus  were 
wholly  put  aside.  On  the  one  side,  in  the  escha- 
tological  sayings  of  Jesus,  as  read  in  the  Gospels, 
a  kernel  of  genuine  words  of  Jesus  was  found,  a 
kernel  regarded  as  not  being  in  opposition  to 
Jesus'  spiritual  conception  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven;  on  the  other  side,  in  the  great  escha- 
tological  utterance  (in  Mark  13  and  parallels) 
a  Jewish-Christian  apocalypse  of  the  time  of 
the  Jewish  war  was  recognized,  and  almost 
the  whole  of  this  utterance,  therefore,  was  con- 
sidered not  to  be  genuine  words  of  Jesus.  Yet 
these  differences,  with  a  few  exceptions  to  be 


64  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

mentioned  hereafter,  only  point  to  variations 
of  the  same  type. 

How  deeply  rooted  the  conviction  was  that 
this  was  the  historical  type  was  shown  by  the 
reception  of  Renan's  Life  of  Jesus1  after  1863. 
Renan,  who,  though  supporting  himself  on  Ger- 
man criticism,  had  reverted  to  rationalistic 
views  aesthetically  transfigured  and  poetically 
and  sentimentally  dressed  up,  was  not  able  to  di- 
vert German  scholars  from  their  way.  Strauss 
too,  in  his  Life  of  Jesus  for  the  German  People,  of 
1864,2  accepted  in  its  essential  points  the  liberal 
Jesus-picture.  This  picture  was  also  received  by 
dictionaries  of  general  information.  It  was  re- 
garded as  the  picture  of  the  historical  Jesus  in 
its  distinction  from  the  Christ  of  the  dogmas;3 
the  soaring  flight  of  pious  Christological  im- 
postures, as  Holtzmann  called  them,4  was  ridi- 
culed. 

*E.  Renan,  La  vie  de  Jesus,  Paris,  1863. — 2D.  F.  Strauss,  Das 
Leben  Jesu  fur  das  deutsche  Folk  bearbeitet,  Leipsic,  1864. 

3  Comp.  Jesus  v.  Nazareth  im  Wortlaut  eines  kritischbearbeiteten 
Einheitsevangeliums  dargestellt  von  W.  Hess,  Tubingen,  1900. 

4  In  Die  synopt.  Evangelien,  p.  7,  he  characterizes  Keim's  outline 
in   the  following  manner:  Eine  akademische  Antrittsrede,  die  dent 
himmelsturmenden  Hock/luge  des  frommen  christologischen  Schtvin- 
dels  .  .  .  die  ganze  Macht  und  Klarheit  der  unmittelbar  empfind- 
baren  Wirklichkeit  entgegensetzt. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  65 

But  even  before  1900  a  phase  of  the  Jesus- 
research  was  announced  which  was  new  in  two 
respects. 

More  skeptical  views,  which  saw  in  Saint 
Mark  also  more  symptoms  of  exaggerating  tra- 
dition than  traces  of  eye-witnesses,  had  never 
been  quite  silent  since  Strauss.  One  of  these 
skeptics,  who  afterward  had  followers,  especially 
in  Holland,  Gustav  Volkmar,  of  Zurich  (f  1893),! 
a  pupil  of  Baur,  as  early  as  in  1882  defended 
the  assertion  that  Jesus  was  considered  to  be  the 
Messiah  only  after  his  death.  This  signified 
nothing  less  than  a  heavy  blow  for  everything 
which  liberal  theology  had  hitherto  set  forth 
with  regard  to  the  rise  and  development  of  the 
Messianic  self-consciousness  of  Jesus. 

A  second  critical  opposition  to  the  liberal 
Jesus-picture  arose  from  quite  another  quarter, 
since  Baldensperger,  at  Giessen,  in  i888,2  on 
the  ground  of  the  apocalyptic  literature,  which 
had  not  been  hitherto  sufficiently  appreciated, 
had  shown  that  the  Messianic  hope  of  the  time 

1 G.  Volkmar,  Jesus  Nazarenus  und  die  erste  christliche  7<eit,  mit 
den  beiden  ersten  Erzahlern,  Zurich,  1882. 

2W.  Baldensperger,  Das  Selbstbewusstsein  Jesu  im  Lichte  der 
messianischen  Hoffnungen  seiner  Zeit,  Strassburg,  1888. 


66  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

of  Jesus  was  determined  not  by  the  worldly  po- 
litical but  by  the  supernatural  eschatological 
form  of  the  Messianic  thoughts.  Baldensperger 
himself  did  not  yet  draw  the  consequences  from 
this  view  with  regard  to  Jesus'  preaching  about 
the  kingdom  of  God.  But  Johannes  Weiss,  at 
that  time  at  Marburg,  did  so  somewhat  later,1  in- 
spired by  the  prize  essays  of  two  German  clergy- 
men.2 Jesus'  preaching  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
such  was  Weiss'  opinion  in  1892,  is  to  be  under- 
stood merely  eschatologically.  Hence  his  ethics 
is  characterized  by  a  world-renouncing  ascetic 
trait.  His  Messianic  consciousness  also,  ex- 
pressed in  the  name  Son  of  Man,  participates  in 
the  transcendental  and  apocalyptic  character  of 
the  conception  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  These 
assertions,  too,  seriously  affected  the  prevailing 
views  about  the  character  of  the  Messianic  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus. 

The  first  tendency,  which  recommended  an 
elimination  of  the  eschatology,  was  strength- 

1 J.  Weiss,  Die  Predict  Jesu  vom  Reiche  Gottes,  Gottingen,  1892. 

2  E.  Issel,  Die  Lehre  vom  Reiche  Gottes  im  Neuen  Testament.  Eine 
von  der  Haager  Gesellschaft  .  .  .  gekronte  Preisschrift,  Ley  den, 
1891;  O.  Schmoller,  Die  Lehre  vom  Reiche  Gottes  in  den  Sckriften 
des  Neuen  Testaments.  Bearbeitung  einer  von  der  Haager  Gesell- 
schaft .  .  .  gestellten  Aufgabe,  Leyden,  1891. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  67 

ened  when,  in  1896,  Lietzmann,  now  at  Jena, 
undertook  to  prove  that  Jesus  never  called  him- 
self "Son  of  Man."1  The  second  tendency,  by 
which,  on  the  contrary,  the  eschatology  was 
placed  in  the  centre,  was  promoted  by  the  in- 
creasing interest  in  the  history  of  religions.  For 
the  stranger  an  idea,  when  understood  by  means 
of  the  comparative  history  of  religion,  appeared 
to  modern  thought,  the  more  confidently  did  the 
supporters  of  religious  history  believe  that  its 
true  meaning  had  been  found. 

The  new  phase  of  the  Jesus-research,  an- 
nounced and  prepared  in  this  manner  by  the 
closing  nineteenth  century,  made  itself  felt  in 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth. 

First  to  be  mentioned  is  William  Wrede, 
of  Breslau  (f  1906),  who  ever  since  our  student 
days  had  been  a  dear  friend  of  mine  and  whom  I 
esteemed  for  his  purity  and  fine  feeling  and  highly 
valued  for  his  learning  and  his  sagacity,  in  spite 
of  our  theological  differences.  In  1901  he  pub- 
lished his  book,  The  Messiah-Mystery  in  the  Gos- 
pels (i.  e.,  the  secret  of  Messiahship).2  Here  the 

1H.  Lietzmann,  Der  Menschensohn,  Freiburg,  1896. — 2W. 
Wrede,  Das  Messiasgeheimnis  in  den  Evangelien,  Gottingen,  1901. 


68  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

skepticism  of  Volkmar  was  combined  with  influ- 
ences from  the  school  of  comparative  religious  his- 
tory. And  it  was  just  this  combination  that  made 
Wrede's  book  a  strong  attack  on  the  Jesus- 
picture  hitherto  prevailing  in  liberal  theology. 

Here,  too,  I  can  single  out  only  the  most  char- 
acteristic points. 

Firstly,  Jesus  was,  according  to  Wrede,  con- 
sidered to  be  the  Messiah  only  after  his  disciples 
had  believed  in  his  resurrection.  Then  at  first 
the  Messiahship  was  understood  in  the  sense  that 
Jesus  would  soon  come  on  the  clouds  of  heaven 
and  establish  his  kingdom;  later  the  Messianic 
dignity  of  Jesus  was  referred  back  to  his  earthly 
life.  An  intermediate  stage  in  this  development 
is  seen  in  Saint  Mark.  Frequently,  it  is  true, 
Saint  Mark  repeats  the  later  tradition,  which 
pictures  Jesus  in  his  earthly  life  as  the  Messiah; 
as,  for  instance,  at  the  entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem and  in  his  confession  before  the  high 
priest.  And  Saint  Mark  occasionally  makes 
Jesus  confess  himself  as  the  Messiah  even  in  the 
beginnings  of  his  activity.  But  essentially  Saint 
Mark,  according  to  Wrede,  has  another  theory. 
Wrede  characterizes  it  by  the  term  he  invented, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  69 

as  "  the  Messiah-mystery/'  During  the  earthly 
life  of  Jesus,  that  is  the  meaning  of  this  term,  only 
the  devils  and  the  intimate  companions  of  Jesus 
knew  of  his  Messiahship;  to  others,  in  conform- 
ity with  Jesus'  orders,  this  mystery  remained 
hidden  until  after  the  resurrection.  Such,  ac- 
cording to  Wrede,  is  Saint  Mark's  main  theory. 

Secondly,  the  very  juxtaposition  of  this  theory 
and  the  traces  of  the  opinion  that  Jesus  already 
in  his  earthly  life  revealed  his  Messiahship 
makes  the  narrative  of  Saint  Mark  hazy  and 
psychologically  incomprehensible.  It  becomes 
still  less  conceivable,  according  to  Wrede,  be- 
cause it  presupposes  a  superhuman  dignity  of 
Jesus  as  the  son  of  God  in  a  supernatural  sense. 
Hence  it  is  governed  by  a  dogmatic  theory,  not 
by  the  author's  insight  into  psychological  ne- 
cessities. A  real  knowledge  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
is  not  to  be  found  in  Saint  Mark. 

Thirdly,  those  lives  of  Jesus,  therefore,  which 
assert  a  development  of  his  Messianic  self- 
consciousness  and  of  his  revelation  of  it,  and  a 
gradual  education  of  the  disciples  to  Jesus'  own 
understanding  of  his  Messianic  calling,  cannot 
be  supported  by  Saint  Mark.  For  Saint  Mark 


70  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

knows  nothing  of  such  development.  Moreover, 
these  modern  descriptions  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
suffer  in  different  degree  from  false  psycholo- 
gizing. Often  they  behave  themselves  as  if  they 
were  acquainted  with  the  most  intimate  emo- 
tions and  reflections  of  Jesus. 

Fourthly,  the  question  whether  Jesus  consid- 
ered himself  to  be  the  Messiah  at  all,  is  left  unde- 
cided by  Wrede.  If  Jesus  did  so,  the  genuine 
tradition  is  so  interwoven  with  later  ones  that 
it  is  not  easy  to  recognize. 

The  impression  of  the  whole  of  Wrede's  treat- 
ment is,  that  we  know  much  less  about  the  life 
of  Jesus  than  was  assumed  by  the  liberal  the- 
ology. Above  all,  Wrede  found  difficulties  which 
we  cannot  resolve  in  the  catastrophe  of  Jesus' 
life.  Thus  the  liberal  Jesus-picture  is  declared 
by  him  to  be  untenable  in  all  respects.  Even 
the  main  turning-point  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  which, 
according  to  the  liberal  conception,  is  the  con- 
fession of  Peter  at  Caesarea  Philippi,  is  set  aside 
as  unhistorical. 

In  the  same  year,  1901,  Albert  Schweitzer  pub- 
lished a  sketch  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  which  from  the 
opposite  side,  by  emphasizing  the  eschatological 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  71 

idea,  opposed  the  liberal  Jesus-picture.1  Ac- 
cording to  Schweitzer,  Jesus  lived  completely  in 
the  eschatological  Messianic  ideas,  based  upon 
the  near  approach  of  the  supernatural  kingdom 
of  heaven.  The  people,  it  is  true,  as  well  as 
John  the  Baptist,  regarded  him  only  as  the 
forerunner  of  the  Messiah.  He  himself  thought 
the  time  when  he  was  to  reign  as  Messianic  king 
immediately  approaching.  From  his  ethical  in- 
structions, therefore,  we  cannot  separate  the 
supposition  that  now  the  world  would  only  last 
for  a  very  short  time;  they  proposed  only  In- 
terims-Ethics, as  Schweitzer  says.  When  Jesus 
sent  forth  the  twelve  with  the  sermon  of  in- 
structions, preserved  in  Saint  Matthew  10,  he 
expected  that  the  end  would  come  before  their 
return.  Disappointed  in  this  expectation  and 
obliged  by  the  confession  of  Peter  at  Caesarea 
Philippi  to  concede  his  Messiahship,  he  resolved 
to  force  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  by  his  death. 
His  entry  into  Jerusalem  was  for  him  himself  a 
Messianic  act,  but  the  people  greeted  him  only 
as  Elijah,  the  precursor  of  the  Messiah.  In  the 

1  A.  Schweitzer,  Das  Messianitats-  und  Leidensgeheimnis.     Eine 
Skizze  des  Lebcns  Jesu,  Tubingen,  1901. 


72  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

disputes  of  the  next  days,  also,  Jesus  did  not 
reveal  himself  as  the  Messiah.  But  Judas  be- 
trayed to  Jesus'  enemies  the  secret  of  his  Mes- 
siahship  known  to  him  since  Caesarea  Philippi. 
The  result  was  that  Jesus  met  the  death  which 
he  had  recognized  as  being  necessary  for  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

Of  these  two  publications  of  the  year  1901, 
Wrede's  book  very  much  occupied  the  attention 
of  German  scholars.  Schweitzer's  assertions 
were  not  valued  as  important  until  he  himself 
qualified  them  as  epoch-making  in  his  second 
book,  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  this  lect- 
ure, whose  title,  From  Reimarus  to  Wrede, 
should  rather  be  From  Reimarus  to  Schweitzer. 
Here  Schweitzer  considers  it  as  a  divine  dis- 
pensation that  Wrede's  book  and  his  own  sketch 
appeared  simultaneously.  In  both  books,  he 
proclaims,  war  is  declared  against  the  liberal 
Jesus-picture  with  its  false  psychology  and  af- 
fected historical  clearness  which  could  only 
modernize  Jesus.  The  liberal  Jesus-research 
is,  in  his  opinion,  on  the  point  of  suffering  de- 
feat. The  historical  truth,  of  course,  is  not 
found  by  Schweitzer  in  Wrede's  ideas  but  in  his 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  73 

own  consistently  eschatological  views.  At  the 
same  time,  he  admits  that  this  really  historical 
Jesus,  who  with  Messianic  majesty  tried  to  real- 
ize erroneous  and  antiquated  hopes,  can  have 
no  value  for  us.  The  historical  knowledge  of 
Jesus  has  become,  so  he  thinks,  an  offence  to  re- 
ligion. Only  the  idea  of  Christ,  plucked  out  of 
its  temporal  soil,  that  is  to  say  the  spirit  of 
Jesus,  will  overcome  the  world. 

The  friends  of  the  liberal  Jesus-picture  have 
not  given  up  their  arms  either  to  Wrede  and 
Schweitzer  or  to  Drews  and  Smith.  I  will  prove 
this  by  only  a  few  references  to  the  copious  litera- 
ture of  the  most  recent  time.  The  gray-haired 
Holtzmann,  who  died  in  1910,  as  late  as  1907 
contributed,  as  he  said,  to  a  revision  of  the  judg- 
ment of  death  pronounced  by  Schweitzer  upon 
the  views  hitherto  defended  by  him.1  Jiilicher, 
in  some  ingenious,  careful,  and  instructive  lect- 
ures,2 refused  to  accept  Wrede's  statements,  but 
he  did  it  with  great  esteem  for  Wrede  himself, 


1 H.  J.  Holtzmann,  Das  messianische  Selbstbewusstsein  Jfsu, 
Tubingen,  1907;  Die  Marcus-Kontroverse  in  ihrer  heutigen  Gestalt 
(Archiv  fur  Religionswissenschaft,  Leipsic,  1907,  pp.  18-40,  161- 
207.) — 2  A.  Julicher,  Neue  Linien  in  der  Kritik  der  evangelischen 
Uberlifferung,  Giessen,  1906. 


74  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

while  he  treated  the  assertions  of  Schweitzer 
with  supreme  sarcasm.  In  opposition  to  Drews 
and  Smith,  Weinel  confidently  gave  a  nega- 
tive answer  to  the  question,  Is  the  liberal  Jesus- 
picture  refuted?1  And  only  a  few  months  ago 
Heitmiiller,  in  his  article  "Jesus  Christ "  in  the 
Handworterbuch  of  Schiele  and  Zscharnack,  es- 
sentially followed  the  lines  of  liberal  theology. 
But  Jiilicher  concedes  that  in  an  examination 
of  the  sources  the  subjectivity  of  the  examiner 
cannot  be  completely  excluded,  and  that  for 
this  reason  alone  an  objectively  true  and  abso- 
lutely indisputable  picture  of  Jesus  will  not  be 
delineated  by  historical  science.  Weinel  openly 
acknowledged  many  faults  in  the  liberal  Jesus- 
research,  and  an  interesting  question  arises  from 
the  manner  in  which  he  pronounces  Jesus  as 
"  the  essence  and  standard  of  all  Christianity, 
and  even  more  than  this/'2  although  his  Jesus- 
picture  remains  within  purely  human  limits. 
The  question  is,  whether,  if  the  whole  of  Chris- 
tianity one  day  should  agree  with  his  views,  a 
Christological  development  would  not  begin  the 

1 H.  Weinel,  1st  das  "liberale"  Jesusbild  widerlegt  ?  Sine  Antwort 
an  seine  "  positiven  "  und  seine  radikalen  Gegner  mil  besondrer  Ruck- 
sicht  auf  A.  Drews,  Die  (Jhristusmythe,  Tubingen,  1910. — 2P.  20. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  75 

next  day  which  would  destroy  the  framework  of 
the  purely  human  conception  of  Jesus.  Heit- 
miiller,  too,  admits  that  the  height  of  the  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus  almost  stupefies  us  and 
that  it  nearly  surpasses  the  limits  of  humanity. 
Thus  we  see  that  confidence  in  the  reliability 
of  the  liberal  Jesus-picture  has  been  shattered. 
Besides,  the  critical  opposition  is  still  alive.  The 
skepticism  of  Wrede  and  the  eschatological  zeal 
of  Schweitzer  did  not  die  out.  A  point  of  view 
quite  similar  to  Wrede's  is  held  by  no  less  a  critic 
than  Julius  Wellhausen.1  And  the  skepticism  of 
Wrede  is  even  surpassed  by  Wellhausen  in  un- 
dermining the  reliability  of  the  biblical  sayings 
of  Jesus:  his  exclusive  confidence  in  Saint  Mark 
prevents  him  from  doing  justice  to  the  words 
of  Jesus,  preserved  only  by  the  first  and  third 
evangelists,  and  in  Saint  Mark,  too,  he  finds 
much  spurious  matter  in  the  sayings  of  Jesus. 
Even  the  word  "gospel'*  is  considered  as  a  term 
first  set  in  circulation  by  the  Christian  mission. 


*•].  Wellhausen,  Das  Evangelium  Marci,  ubersetzt  und  erkldrt, 
Berlin,  1903;  Das  Evangelium  Matthaei  usw.,  Berlin,  1904;  Das 
Evangelium  Lucae  usw.,  Berlin,  1904;  Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten 
Evangelien,  Berlin,  1905;  Das  Evangelium  Jokannis,  Berlin,  1908. 
Comp.  espec.  Einleitung  in  die  drei  usw.,  pp.  89-115. 


76  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

About  the  life  of  Jesus  more  is  known,  accord- 
ing to  Wellhausen,  than  about  his  sayings.  But 
a  development  in  the  life  of  Jesus  is  to  be  found 
in  Saint  Mark  only  by  false  interpretation.  And 
the  tale  of  Saint  Mark  that  Jesus  went  to  Jeru- 
salem in  order  to  be  crucified  there  is  untenable. 
The  suffering  Messiah  and  the  entire  conception 
of  the  Messiah,  as  understood  by  the  Christians, 
is  an  idea  which  first  grew  up  with  the  belief  in 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  Wellhausen  concedes 
that  Jesus  during  his  lifetime  was  held  by  his  dis- 
ciples to  be  the  Messiah  in  the  Jewish  sense. 
But  Jesus  himself,  according  to  Wellhausen,  was 
more  reserved  in  this  respect.  Perhaps  he  ul- 
timately confessed  himself  as  the  Messiah  before 
the  high  priest.  But  really  he  did  not  wish  to  be 
more  than  a  sower  who  scattered  the  seed  of  the 
word  of  God  and  strove  to  prepare  a  religious 
regeneration  of  his  nation.  Had  he  not  died  he 
would  scarcely  have  become  a  historical  person. 
He  never  spoke  to  his  disciples  either  about  his 
death  or  about  his  resurrection,  to  say  nothing 
about  his  silence  as  to  his  second  coming.1 
This  conception  of  Wellhausen's  is  a  small  frag- 

*J.  Wellhausen,  Einleitung,  p.  115. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  77 

ment  of  the  liberal  Jesus-picture.  The  rest  has 
gone  to  pieces.  Wellhausen  himself  confesses 
that  the  historical  Jesus  as  the  foundation  of 
our  religion  is  a  doubtful  and  insufficient  com- 
pensation for  that  which  has  been  lost  with  the 
gospel.  This  is  a  confession  of  the  shipwreck 
of  the  liberal  Jesus-research  which  only  knows 
a  human  Jesus.1 

Schweitzer's  ideas,  too,  apart  from  his  ab- 
struse fancies,  did  not  find  opposition  alone.  For 
the  emphasis  laid  on  the  eschatological  element 
in  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  has  in  Germany 
its  friends,  especially  among  younger  theologi- 
ans. And  hence,  too,  it  appears  that  liberal 
German  Jesus-research  is  approaching  ship- 
wreck; for  if  even  Oskar  Holtzmann,  although 
he  is  far  from  accepting  Schweitzer's  eschato- 
logical views,  already  saw  in  Jesus  an  ecstatic 
person,2  still  less  can  a  sound  human  conscious- 
ness be  found  in  a  Jesus  as  pictured  by  Schweit- 
zer. Of  course,  the  objectionable  book  of  the 
Danish  philologist  and  theologian  Rasmussen, 
and  the  scarcely  more  pleasing  work  of  the  Ger- 

1 L.  c. — 2  O.  Holtzmann,  War  Jesus  ein  Ekstatiker  ?  Tubingen, 
1903. 


78  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH? 

man  physician  De  Loosten,1  two  books  in  which 
the  psychical  soundness  of  Jesus  is  discussed  and 
denied,  cannot  be  charged  to  German  theology. 
But  it  is  significant  that  an  ultra-liberal  German 
theologian  who,  to  a  certain  extent,  accepted 
Schweitzer's  assertions,  took  into  account  the 
possibility  that  we  may  find  in  Jesus  traits  of 
psychological  abnormalities.2  If  the  purely  hu- 
man conception  of  Jesus  were  forced  to  accept 
this,  then  here  too  would  be  a  confession  of  its 
shipwreck. 

Yet  this  judgment  and  the  similar  ones  pro- 
nounced above  are  but  anticipations.  To-day 
I  must  come  to  a  close  here.  The  question 
whether  the  Jesus-research,  dealing  only  with  a 
human  Jesus,  has  produced  tenable  results  will 
occupy  us  in  the  next  two  lectures. 

1 E.  Rasmussen,  Jesus.  Eine  psychopathologische  Studie,  ubertra- 
gen  und  herausgegeben  von  Rottenburg,  Leipsic,  1905;  De  Loos- 
ten,  Jesus  Christus  vom  Standpunkte  des  Psychiaters,  Bamberg, 
1905.  Comp.  H.  Werner,  Die  psychische  Gesundheit  Jesu  (Biblische 
Zeit-  und  Streitfragen,  IV,  12),  Gross-Lichterfelde,  1908. 

2  G.  Hollmann,  in  Theol.  Rundschau,  IX,  Tubingen,  1906, 
P-  275. 


Ill 

LIBERAL  JESUS-RESEARCH  AND  THE 
SOURCES 

TN  the  preceding  lecture  we  obtained  a  survey 
of  the  liberal  German  Jesus-research,  that  is 
to  say,  that  branch  of  German  Jesus-research 
which  considers  Jesus  a  purely  human  being. 
We  have  also  seen  that  critics,  reasoning  from 
quite  opposite  points  of  view,  arrive  at  the  re- 
sult that  the  liberal  Jesus-research  has  suffered 
shipwreck.  However  differently  they  may  think 
in  other  respects,  in  this  verdict  William  Ben- 
jamin Smith  and  Albert  Schweitzer  do  agree. 
Are  they  right  in  pronouncing  this  verdict? 
Has  the  liberal  German  Jesus-research  really 
led  to  no  tenable  results  ?  This  is  the  question 
which  is  now  to  engage  our  attention. 

One  would  deem  it  an  easy  task  to  give  a  nega- 
tive answer  to  this  question.  For  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  quote  one  scholar  against  the  other,  and, 
because  of  the  many  discordant  views  of  the 

79 


8o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

different  scholars,  to  impress  their  contradic- 
tions so  strongly  upon  the  hearers  that  they 
lose  all  confidence  in  this  contradictory  his- 
torical research.  But  this  is  not  the  way  to 
settle  the  question.  For,  in  the  first  place, 
much  difficult  study,  for  instance  the  criticism 
of  the  synoptic  Gospels,  has  only  gradually 
worked  its  way  out  of  the  chaos  of  wild  hypothe- 
ses, each  depriving  the  other  of  light  and  breath. 
And,  in  the  second  place,  we  cannot  deny  that, 
e.  g.9  the  views  of  Heitmiiller  in  Schiele  and 
Zscharnack's  Handwortsrbuch  are  held  to  be  cor- 
rect by  a  great  number  of  scholars  even  at  the 
present  day.  Quite  a  number  of  historical  truths 
would  no  longer  hold  their  own  if  we  were  to 
recognize  as  certain  those  only  which  have  been 
generally  accepted. 

Nor  can  we  prove  that  the  liberal  German 
Jesus-research  has  suffered  shipwreck  by  merely 
pointing  out  that  the  certainty  with  which  The- 
odor  Keim  once  thought  he  had  penetrated  into 
the  details  of  the  real  life  of  Jesus  and  his  de- 
velopment, proved  to  be  illusive.  Even  though 
a  few  scholars  follow  similar  lines  to-day,  e.  £., 
Oskar  Holtzmann,  still  this  phase  of  Jesus-re- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  81 

search  belongs  to  the  past.  Many  of  the  scholars 
dealing  with  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus  will 
agree  with  the  complaints  of  W.  B.  Smith  and 
Schweitzer  regarding  unjustifiable  sharp-sighted- 
ness  and  false  psychologizing  in  the  older  liberal 
Jesus-research.  Trivial  criticism  of  mistakes 
made  by  the  older  scholars  and  admitted  by  the 
later  ones  themselves  does  not  discredit  the 
whole  attempt  to  sketch  a  purely  human  life  of 
Jesus. 

We  must  go  to  work  far  more  seriously.  Let 
us  discuss  our  question  in  a  twofold  manner, 
historically  to-day,  theologically  in  the  next  lect- 
ure. I  shall  first  explain  what  I  mean  by  this 
twofold  manner. 

History  has  to  reckon  with  the  analogy  from 
other  experience.  No  Protestant  will  find  fault 
with  historical  research  for  relegating  to  the 
sphere  of  fiction  or  misunderstanding  or  exag- 
gerating the  miracles  told  in  the  Catholic  lives 
of  saints.  Everything  that  is  impossible  ac- 
cording to  all  our  experience  is  to  be  put  aside 
as  being  unhistorical.  For  historical  research 
has  to  make  clear  in  its  genetic  connection  what 
happened  in  the  past;  and,  as  measure  for  what 


82  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

is  possible,  it  has  to  employ  our  experience. 
If  we  read  in  a  text-book  of  modern  history  that 
the  death  of  Queen  Victoria  on  the  22d  of  Jan- 
uary, 1901,  was  the  occasion  for  memorial  ser- 
vices in  Canada  as  early  as  the  23d  of  January, 
we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  this.  Ten  years 
ago  the  telegraph  carried  news  across  the 
ocean.  But  if  an  eighteenth-century  report 
were  to  tell  us  that  the  death  of  George 
Whitefield,  which  occurred  on  September  20, 
1770,  in  Newburyport,  Mass.,  was  the  occasion 
for  a  memorial  service  by  John  Wesley  on  the 
1st  of  October  of  the  same  year,  we  should 
have  to  conclude  that  this  could  not  be  true. 
In  those  days  what  happened  here  in  America 
could  only  have  become  known  in  England  sev- 
eral weeks  later.  Again,  we  shall  not  doubt  the 
report  that  Wesley  held  a  memorial  service  for 
his  old  friend  in  London  on  the  i8th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1770,  even  if  we  do  not  know  who  brought 
the  news  of  Whitefield's  death  to  England.  It 
is  sufficient  for  us  to  know  that,  according  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  means  of  communication 
between  England  and  America  at  that  time,  the 
report  could  have  been  in  England  at  that  date. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  83 

Thus,  historical  science  is  often  in  a  position  to 
recognize  a  fact  upon  contemporary  evidence, 
although  it  is  not  known  by  what  it  was  caused. 
If  there  is  a  possible  cause  to  be  presumed,  our 
ignorance  regarding  this  cause  does  not  matter. 
But  where  we  cannot  find  any  cause  which,  ac- 
cording to  our  experience,  is  possible,  then  every 
conscientious  historian  is  prevented  from  speak- 
ing of  a  historical  fact.  Hence,  when  historians 
are  forced  by  credible  reports  to  recognize  a 
fact  as  having  really  occurred,  they  must  as- 
sume causes  lying  within  the  sphere  of  our  ex- 
perience. 

From  this  it  follows  that  historical  science, 
when  investigating  the  life  of  Jesus,  must  take 
into  consideration  the  supposition  that  it  was  a 
purely  human  life  and  that  nothing  happened 
in  it  which  falls  outside  the  sphere  of  human 
experience.  Giving  up  this  supposition  would 
mean  admitting  that  the  life  of  Jesus,  or  this  or 
that  event  in  his  life,  is  incommensurable  for 
historical  science. 

Permit  me  to  illustrate  this  by  an  example. 
It  is  a  fact,  which  Reimarus  was  wrong  in  try- 
ing to  push  aside,  that  the  disciples  of  Jesus 


84  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

were  convinced  of  his  resurrection.  Historical 
science,  therefore,  is  not  only  allowed  but  also 
obliged  to  explain  this  conviction  of  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  from  causes  lying  within  the 
sphere  of  natural  human  experience.  If  his- 
torians come  to  the  conclusion  that  such  an  ex- 
planation is  impossible,  then  they  will  have  to 
say:  "Here  historical  knowledge  and  the  possi- 
bility of  scientific  historical  perception  cease; 
for  the  historian  does  not  come  to  a  satisfactory 
solution  of  this  question,  nor  can  he  do  so;  here 
he  comes  into  touch  with  the  sphere  of  religious 
belief."  This  was  the  position  of  the  famous  his- 
torian Leopold  von  Ranke1  regarding  Christ's 
resurrection.  But  as  long  as  a  historian  does 
not  declare  his  science  to  be  incompetent,  he 
must  look  for  a  natural  explanation  of  the  faith 
of  the  disciples.  No  description  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  that  recognizes  supernatural  factors  is 
purely  historical.  An  author  treating  his  sub- 
ject in  some  chapters  as  a  historian  would  do, 
but  elsewhere  emancipating  himself  from  the 
analogy  of  human  experience,  will  produce  a 
mixture  of  history  and  assertions  of  faith.  And, 

1  Weltgeschichte,  III,  Leipsic,  1883,  p.  169. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  85 

in  my  opinion,  this  combination  of  heterogeneous 
modes  of  consideration  is  to  be  welcomed  neither 
by  a  believing  Christian  nor  by  a  scholarly  his- 
torian. Every  one  who  undertakes  the  task  of 
writing  a  life  of  Jesus  comparable  to  historical 
biographies  and,  like  these,  requiring  scien- 
tific consent  of  the  reader,  is  forced  to  suppose 
that  his  life  was  a  purely  human  one.  If,  on 
the  contrary,  the  life  of  Jesus  cannot  be  under- 
stood as  a  purely  human  one,  then  historical 
science  may  give  from  its  sources  evidence  to 
this  or  that  of  the  doings  or  sufferings  or  sayings 
of  Jesus,  but  to  do  full  justice  to  his  life  and  his 
person  is  beyond  its  limits.  The  latter  is  my 
conviction. 

If  I  attempt  to  prove  its  soundness  to  you, 
then,  after  what  I  have  said  above,  a  twofold 
task  lies  before  me. 

First,  I  shall  have  to  show  that  nobody,  rely- 
ing on  the  supposition  that  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  being,  is  able  to  write  a  really  historical 
life  of  Jesus;  and,  secondly,  I  shall  have  to  make 
evident  that  this  supposition  itself,  although 
necessary  for  scientific  historical  treatment  of 
the  subject,  is  yet  a  false  one.  The  first  proof 


86  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

requires,  as  I  said,  historical  discussion,  and 
the  second  cannot  be  furnished  without  theo- 
logical argumentation. 

To-day  only  the  former  one  will  occupy  us. 
To-day,  therefore,  I  let  pass  the  supposition  that 
the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely  human  one.  To- 
day I  do  not  wish  to  do  anything  beyond  at- 
tempting to  prove  that  on  this  supposition  a 
really  historical  life  of  Jesus  and  a  historically 
tenable  picture  of  Jesus'  personality  cannot  be 
built  up. 

Only  that  description  and  conception  is  his- 
torically justifiable  which  does  justice  to  the 
sources  of  our  historical  knowledge  and  is  ten- 
able in  itself.  For  to-day,  therefore,  our  sub- 
ject has  two  principal  parts:  we  have,  first,  to 
test  that  criticism  of  sources  which  is  made 
necessary  by  the  supposition  of  a  purely  human 
life  of  Jesus;  and,  secondly,  we  have  to  ascer- 
tain whether  by  means  of  this  criticism  a  tenable 
reconstruction  is  attained  of  that  which  really 
happened,  a  tenable  description  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  and  a  tenable  conception  of  his  personality. 

Now  the  criticism  of  the  sources  is  a  double 
one:  research  has,  in  the  first  place,  to  ascertain 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  87 

what  the  sources  are,  from  what  time  they  date, 
from  whom  they  come;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
it  has  to  form  an  opinion  as  to  the  value  of  the 
sources;  that  is,  what  amount  of  credibility  we 
may  assign  to  them.  Both  these  questions  in 
the  Gospel  of  John  are  intricately  intertwined. 
Therefore,  I  cannot  first  treat  the  former  ques- 
tion with  regard  to  the  synoptic  Gospels  and 
John,  and  then  the  second  one  likewise  for  all 
our  Gospels.  But  it  is  just  as  impossible  to  dis- 
cuss both  questions,  first,  with  regard  to  the 
synoptics,  then,  with  regard  to  John.  For  the 
question  of  the  credibility  of  the  synoptics  can- 
not be  settled  without  reference  to  the  Gospel 
of  John.  I  should,  therefore,  like  to  go  a  mid- 
dle way.  At  first  we  shall  confine  ourselves  to 
the  synoptics,  in  which  liberal  theologians  since 
Strauss  see  the  real  source  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 

Here  research  since  the  time  of  Strauss  has 
led  to  widely  recognized  results.  There  are,  it 
is  true,  even  scholars  of  repute,  like  Theodor 
Zahn,  who  hold  an  Aramaic  Gospel  of  the  apostle 
Matthew,  closely  resembling  our  first  Gospel, 
to  have  been  the  oldest  Gospel.  Nevertheless,  the 
ruling  view,  and  to  my  mind  the  correct  one,  is 


88  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

that  the  Gospel  of  Mark,  or  a  more  original  form 
of  it  not  essentially  different  from  ours,  was 
the  first  Gospel.  The  Gospels  of  Matthew  and 
Luke  are  dependent  on  it;  the  arrangement  of 
the  materials  in  Mark  determines  the  order  of 
the  stories  in  the  other  two.  This  is  especially 
noticeable  in  Luke.  He  follows  the  order  of 
Mark  up  to  the  journey  of  Jesus  to  the  Passover 
in  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  his  death,  i.  e.,  to 
9:51.  Then  he  introduces  materials  which  he 
did  not  find  in  Mark;  but  nine  chapters  farther 
on  he  again  returns  to  the  description  of  Mark. 
Thus,  it  would  seem  as  if  everything  between 
9:  51  and  18:  14  happened  on  the  journey  from 
Galilee  to  Judea.  These  chapters  are,  there- 
fore, called  Luke's  "report  of  the  journey." 
This  "report  of  the  journey"  is  the  clearest 
proof  of  Luke's  dependence  on  Mark.  For,  if 
Luke  had  possessed  any  knowledge  of  the  order 
of  events  apart  from  Mark,  he  would  not  have 
introduced  his  new  material  so  helplessly  into 
the  framework  of  Mark. 

Just  as  certain  as  the  fact  that  Mark  is  one 
of  the  sources  of  the  first  and  third  Gospels  is 
the  other  fact  that  the  first  and  the  third  evan- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  89 

gelists  had  a  second  common  source  in  a  book 
probably  originally  written  in  Aramaic  but  made 
use  of  by  them  in  a  Greek  translation.  This 
book  contained  chiefly  sayings  of  Jesus,  and. is, 
therefore,  often  called  "collection  of  sayings." 
The  differences  of  opinion  about  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  this  lost  source  are  of  minor  importance 
for  the  questions  which  occupy  us.  But  it  may 
be  mentioned  that,  as  is  generally  recognized, 
the  first,  and  particularly  the  third,  evangelist 
had  special  sources  in  addition  to  the  afore- 
named two. 

These  outlines  of  synoptic  criticism  may  be 
looked  upon  as  certain.  Their  recognition  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question  whether  the 
life  of  Jesus  is  to  be  considered  as  purely  human 
or  not. 

But  it  is  this  very  question  that  makes  it 
difficult  for  many  scholars  to  form  an  unbiassed 
opinion  about  the  date  of  these  sources.  Through 
Strauss  and  the  Tubingen  school,  who,  it  is  true, 
did  not  possess  our  knowledge  of  the  sources  of 
the  synoptics,  the  tendency  had  arisen  to  come 
as  far  down  as  possible  in  fixing  the  date  of 
the  Gospels.  Strauss  undoubtedly  came  to  this 


90  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

view  from  his  desire  to  obtain  as  much  time  as 
possible  for  the  growing  of  myths.  At  present, 
critics  have  everywhere  recognized  that  it  is  not 
correct  to  date  the  Gospels  so  late.  But  still  they 
often  defend  pretty  late  dates.  Jiilicher,  e.  g., 
admits  only  the  "collection  of  sayings"  to  be 
earlier  than  the  year  70;  the  Gospel  of  Mark  is 
placed  by  him  shortly  after  70,  Matthew  shortly 
before  100,  and  Luke  in  the  time  between  80 
and  100.  Yet  it  is  shown  by  a  recent  publi- 
cation of  Adolf  Harnack,1  that  even  critical 
theology  can  come  to  quite  different  results. 
In  this  new  book  Harnack  is  defending  the 
opinion  that  the  Acts  were  written  at  the  same 
time  as  that  in  which  their  narrative  closes;  that 
is,  the  time  when  Saint  Paul  had  been  in  captiv- 
ity at  Rome  for  two  years.  According  to  Har- 
nack, this  second  year  of  Paul's  Roman  cap- 
tivity ended  in  the  year  59.2  According  to  an 
inscription,  which  Harnack  did  not  make  use 
of,  the  year  61  or  62  is  probably  more  correct.3 

1  A.  Harnack,  Neue  Untersuchungen  zur  Apostelgeschichte  und  zur 
Abfassungszeit  der  synoptischen  Evangelien,  Leipsic,  1911. — 2  Die 
Chronologic  der  altchristlichen  Litteratur,  I,  Leipsic,  1897,  p.  239. 

3  Comp.  H.  Lietzmann,  Ein  neuer  Fund  zur  Chronologie  des 
Paulus  (Zeitschrift  fur  wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  53,  1911,  pp. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  91 

Earlier  than  the  Acts,  hence  before  61  or  62 
A.  D.,  the  Gospel  of  Luke  must  have  been  writ- 
ten. Of  a  still  earlier  date  must  be  the  first  copy 
at  least  of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  which  Luke  made 
use  of  and  which  probably  is  essentially  iden- 
tical with  the  Gospel  published  by  Mark  in  later 
years.  It  is  still  farther  back,  about  50  A.  D. 
or  even  earlier,  that  Harnack  places  the  "collec- 
tion of  sayings,"  while  he  dates  our  first  Gospel 
shortly  after  70. 

The  reasons  which  Harnack  gives  in  favor  of 
these  dates  are  undoubtedly  worthy  of  consider- 
ation, though  not  convincing.1  But  even  if  I 
were  convinced,  I  should  be  sure  that  Harnack 
would  not  do  away  with  the  later  dates  which 
are  defended  by  liberal  theologians.  The  very 
interest  in  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus  will  pre- 
vent the  critics  from  recognizing  in  the  great 
eschatological  sermon  of  Luke  21  a  prophecy  of 
Jesus  about  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  and 

345-354).  Since  my  lectures  there  have  appeared:  A.  Deiss- 
mann,  Paulus,  eine  kultur-  und  religions  geschichtliche  Skizze,  Tu- 
bingen, 1911  (comp.  pp.  159-177),  and  A.  Harnack,  Chrono- 
logische  Berechnung  des  "  Tags  von  Damaskus  "  (Sitzungsberichte  der 
konigl.  Preuss.  Akademie  der  Wissenschaften,  1912,  pp.  673-682). 

1 1  think,  e.  g.,  Harnack  has  not  done  justice  to  the  arguments 
which  are  in  favor  of  seeing  a  reference  to  the  Jewish  war  and  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  in  Luke  21:  24. 


92  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

from  admitting  so  early  a  date  to  the  Gospels. 
The  supposition  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a 
purely  human  one  interferes  with  an  impartial 
opinion  on  the  question  as  to  the  date  of  the 
Gospels. 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  lay  much  stress  on  this 
point.  For  liberal  theology,  in  my  opinion,  may 
abandon  the  tendency  to  date  the  Gospels  as 
late  as  possible  without  endangering  its  presup- 
positions. Legends  arise  much  more  quickly  than 
is  assumed  by  liberal  theology  since  Strauss. 
Whenever  a  narrator  undertakes  to  call  up  in 
somebody  else  the  same  deep  impression  which 
an  event  or  an  alarming  piece  of  news  had  made 
upon  himself,  he  is  inclined  to  exaggerate,  as 
every-day  life  teaches  us.  Gustavus  Adolphus 
received  two  or  three  hostile  shots  through  his 
arm  and  breast  in  the  battle  of  Liitzen  on 
November  6,  1632.  In  two  reports,  written 
eight  days  after  the  event,  though  not  by  eye- 
witnesses, we  are  told  that  he  received  three  bul- 
let wounds  and  two  stabs,  and  in  another  report, 
likewise  not  by  an  eye-witness,  written  on  No- 
vember 1 8,  i.  e.y  twelve  days  after  the  battle,  the 
two  or  three  wounds  have  become  seven  (six 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  93 

bullet  wounds  and  one  stab).  Another  report  not 
made  by  an  eye-witness,  dated  from  two  days 
earlier,  even  tells  of  a  brilliant  speech  uttered  by 
the  dying  king.1  The  reluctance  of  the  liberal 
theology  to  accept  an  early  date  of  the  synoptic 
Gospels  is,  therefore,  quite  unnecessary. 

For  —  and  now  we  come  to  the  intrinsic  value 
of  our  sources  —  if  the  question  were  simply 
whether  the  synoptic  Gospels  were  written  by 
eye-witnesses  or  not,  only  then  would  it  have 
been  worth  while  to  date  them  as  late  as  possible 
in  order  to  prove  that  they  could  not  possibly 
have  been  written  by  contemporaries  of  Jesus. 
But  that  is  not  the  question  at  all.  It  is  only  in 
the  case  of  the  "collection  of  sayings,"  which 
did  not  contain  much  narrative,  that  we  may 
assume  apostolic  authorship  —  the  authorship  of 
Matthew  according  to  tradition.  But  we  cannot 
prove  this.  Our  synoptic  Gospels  are  nothing 
but  the  reflection  of  the  tradition,  oral  and  writ- 
ten, that  existed  in  the  congregations  of  their 
time.  And  in  the  case  of  Mark  we  have,  as  it 
seems,  to  do  with  oral  tradition  only.  In  addi- 


.  G.  Droysen,  Die  Schlacht  bei  Liitzen  (Forschungen  zur 
deutschen  Geschichie),  1865,  pp.  69-236. 


94  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

tion  to  the  oral  tradition  and  the  two  written 
sources  mentioned  above,  the  only  written  ma- 
terial which  the  first  evangelist  could  possibly 
have  had  was  the  genealogical  table  which  he 
reproduces  in  chapter  i .  Luke  undoubtedly  pos- 
sessed other  written  sources  besides  the  Gospel 
of  Mark,  besides  the  "collection  of  sayings,"  and 
besides  his  genealogical  table  of  Jesus.  In  the 
first  words  of  his  Gospel  he  expressly  refers  to 
many  others  before  him,  who,  as  he  says,  had 
taken  in  hand  to  set  forth  in  order  a  declaration 
oj 'those  things  which  are  most  surely  believed  among 
us,  even  as  they  delivered  them  unto  us,  which  from 
the  beginning  were  eye-witnesses  and  ministers  of 
the  word.1 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  must  be  granted 
that  the  first  and  third  evangelists  did  not  pos- 
sess any  personal  knowledge,  based  on  special 
traditions,  about  the  course  of  events  in  the  life 
of  Jesus.  Otherwise  they  would  not  have  sim- 
ply followed  Mark  in  this  respect.  But  nat- 
urally this  does  not  signify  that  Mark  was  well 
acquainted  with  the  course  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 
Nevertheless,  the  liberal  German  Jesus-research 

xLuke  i:  I,  2. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  95 

wrongly  assumed  this,  though  of  late  it  has  done 
so  with  decreasing  confidence.  We  shall  soon  see 
why.  For  the  present,  permit  me  to  return  to 
the  assumption  itself  for  a  moment.  On  what 
grounds  was  this  confidence  in  the  story  of  Mark 
founded?  According  to  Eusebius,1  Papias,  a 
bishop  in  Asia  Minor  about  140  A.  D.,  heard  the 
following  story  about  Mark  from  a  man  of  the 
older  generation :  Mark  having  been  the  interpreter 
of  Peter,  wrote  down  accurately,  though  not  indeed 
in  order,  whatsoever  of  the  things  said  and  done  by 
Christ.  For  he  neither  heard  the  Lord  nor  followed 
him,  but  afterward,  as  I  said,  he  followed  Peter,  who 
adapted  his  teaching  to  the  needs  of  his  hearers, 
but  with  no  intention  of  giving  a  connected  account 
of  the  Lord 's  discourses,  so  that  Mark  committed 
no  error  while  he  thus  wrote  some  things  as  he  re- 
membered them.  From  this  passage  people  in- 
ferred that  Mark  reproduced  reminiscences  of 
Peter,  and,  therefore,  they  even  spoke  of  traces 
of  an  eye-witness  in  Saint  Mark.  To  me  this 
appreciation  of  Mark  by  liberal  theologians 
has  always  been  a  very  striking  illustration  of 
the  fact  that  even  theologians  who  otherwise 

1  Eusebius,  H.  E.,  3,  39,  15. 


96  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

are  very  skeptical  toward  tradition  can  have 
great  faith  in  tradition  when  it  serves  their 
purpose.  I  myself  think  that  this  notice  of 
Papias  is  of  very  doubtful  value.  It  may  have 
had  its  origin  in  the  tendency  of  the  later  church 
to  bring  into  connection  with  the  apostles  the 
two  Gospels  that  do  not  bear  an  apostolic  name. 
It  need  not  be  of  greater  value  than  the  notice 
in  Irenaeus,  that  Luke  wrote  down  the  gospel 
preached  by  Paul.1  Moreover,  it  is  not  at  all 
improbable  that  this  notice  in  Irenaeus  comes 
from  the  very  same  passage  in  Papias  to  which 
Eusebius  owes  the  notice  about  Mark.  In  any 
case,  if  we  trust  the  notice  of  Papias  about 
Mark,  we  ought  also  to  recognize  the  other  fact 
which  Papias  mentions,  viz.,  that  Mark  wrote 
what  he  wrote,  not  indeed  in  order.  But  this 
is  ignored,  while  the  former  notice  is  accepted. 
And  why? 

The  answer  can  only  be:  because  the  inter- 
est taken  in  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus  fa- 
vored this  view.  People  wanted  a  chronologi- 
cal sketch,  but  they  were  not  inclined  to  accept 
that  of  John.  Hence,  they  presumed  a  correct 

1  Irenceus  adv.  H<zr.,  3,  i,  2. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  97 

order  of  events  was  to  be  found  in  Saint  Mark. 
Of  John  I  shall  speak  in  a  moment.  Even  apart 
from  the  Johannine  question  it  can  be  shown  that 
Mark  had  no  real  knowledge  of  the  course  of  the 
life  of  Jesus.  Wrede  has  brought  forward  many 
arguments  in  favor  of  this  point,  which  are  inde- 
pendent of  his  theory  about  the  Messiah-mys- 
tery. Everything  in  the  line  of  development 
that  people  thought  they  could  possibly  dis- 
cern in  the  narrative  of  Mark  they  discovered 
only  by  unjustifiable  sharp-sigh tedness.  If  this 
is  the  case,  then  to  prefer  Mark  above  the  other 
two  synoptics,  when  viewed  generally,  that  is, 
before  the  details  are  examined,  is  the  result  of 
a  prejudice,  a  prejudice  so  unfounded  that  it 
proves  the  liberal  Jesus-research  to  be  in  the 
wrong  on  this  point. 

This  becomes  more  evident  when  we  intro- 
duce the  Gospel  of  John  into  the  discussion.  To 
Luther  this  Gospel  was  the  unique,  gentle,  prin- 
cipal Gospel.1  As  late  as  the  time  of  Schleier- 

1  Vorrede  zum  Neuen  Testament,  Erlanger  Ausgabe,  deutsche 
Schriften,  63,  115:  "  Weilan  Johannes  gar  wenig  Werk  von  Christo, 
aber  gar  viel  seiner  Predigt  schreibt,  wiederum  die  andern  drei 
Evangelisten  viel  seiner  Werk,  wenig  seiner  Worte  beschreiben: 
ist  Johannis  Evangelium  das  einige  zarte,  rechte  Hauptevangeli- 
um  und  den  andern  dreien  weit,  weit  vorzuziehen  und  hoher  zu 
heben." 


98  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

macher  it  was  valued  far  more  highly  than  the 
synoptics.  But  Strauss  eliminated  it  from  the 
real  sources  for  the  life  of  Jesus.  And  all  the 
friends  of  the  liberal  Jesus-research,  together 
with  Schweitzer,  appreciate  this  as  a  great  merit. 

For  the  Gospel  of  John  really  throws  insur- 
mountable obstacles  in  the  way  of  describing  a 
purely  human  life  of  Jesus.  We  shall  have  to 
glance  at  these  difficulties  before  proceeding. 

They  are  based  at  first  on  the  evangelist's 
opinion  of  Jesus.  For  him  Jesus  is  the  Word  of 
God,  become  flesh,1  i.  e.,  the  most  perfect  revela- 
tion of  God.  His  Gospel  leads  up  to  the  confes- 
sion of  Thomas,  My  Lord  and  my  God.2  If  this 
Gospel  is  written  by  the  apostle  John,  and  if  he 
is,  as  the  Gospel  at  any  rate  then  would  cer- 
tainly show,  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved*  the 
disciple  who  on  the  night  before  the  death  of 
Jesus  was  leaning  on  Jesus'  bosom4  —  then  lib- 
eral Jesus-research  will  have  considerable  diffi- 
culty in  maintaining  its  view  against  that  of 
the  disciple  who  cast  the  deepest  glance  into 
the  heart  of  Jesus.  Moreover,  if  we  may  trust 
the  words  of  Jesus  reported  in  this  fourth  Gos- 


I  :  14.  —  2  John  20  :  28.  —  3  John  13  :  23;  19  :  26;  20  :  2; 
7,  20.  —  4  John  13  :  23. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  99 

pel,  then  they  unquestionably  reveal  in  Jesus 
a  self-consciousness  which  does  not  agree  with 
a  purely  human  life  of  him.  Furthermore,  some 
miraculous  works  are  told  about  Jesus  in  this 
Gospel  which  suit  a  purely  human  Jesus  no 
better.  I  mention  only  the  raising  of  Lazarus.1 
Finally — and  this  is  of  special  importance — the 
sketch  of  the  life  of  Jesus  in  this  Gospel  differs 
from  that  in  the  synoptics  in  most  essential 
points.  In  the  synoptic  Gospels  Jesus,  after 
being  baptized  in  Judea  by  John,  first  worked 
in  Galilee  exclusively.  Fie  only  comes  to  Jeru- 
salem for  his  Death-Passover.  And  according  to 
the  Gospel  of  Mark,  which  is  supported  in  this 
respect  only  by  the  apocryphal  Gospel  of  Peter, 
Jesus  appears  to  his  disciples  as  the  Risen  One 
only  in  Galilee.  In  the  Gospel  of  John,  how- 
ever, Jesus,  in  consequence  of  his  journeys  to  re- 
ligious feasts,  is  represented  as  being  in  Judea  and 
Jerusalem  four  times  between  his  baptism  and 
his  passion.2  And  the  appearances  of  the  risen 
Lord  are,  if  we  ignore  the  appendix  to  the  Gos- 
pel, chapter  21,  all  located  in  Jerusalem,  just  as 

1  John  ii  :  i/. — 2  John  2  : 13 -3  :  21;  (comp.  4  :  i);  5  : 1  -6  :  i; 
7  :  10-  10  :  21;  10  :  22-39;  I2  :  I2 /• 


ioo  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

is  the  case  in  the  Gospel  of  Luke.  If  this  nar- 
rative of  the  appearances  of  the  risen  Jesus  was 
written  by  the  apostle  John,  then  it  would  be 
difficult  for  liberal  theologians  to  deny  that 
the  grave  of  Jesus  on  the  third  day  was  empty; 
then  they  would  have  to  give  up  the  con- 
tention found  everywhere  in  liberal  Jesus-re- 
search that  the  disciples  of  Jesus  immediately 
after  his  capture  fled  in  a  fright  to  Galilee  and 
that  there,  far  from  the  grave,  which  fiction 
only  later  turned  into  an  opened  one,  they  came 
to  the  impression  that  they  had  seen  the  Lord. 

I  could  mention  other  traits  in  the  fourth 
Gospel  that  do  not  agree  with  a  purely  human 
conception  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  e.  g.,  the  words 
on  the  cross  which  are  here  given.1  But  the  ex- 
amples I  have  quoted  will  suffice  to  make  it  evi- 
dent that  the  purely  human  conception  of  Jesus 
forces  its  supporters  to  declare  that  the  fourth 
Gospel  does  not  come  from  John;  moreover,  that 
it  is  not  worthy  of  belief.  But  by  doing  so  it 
proves  itself,  from  a  really  historical  point  of 
view,  unable  to  do  full  justice  to  the  sources. 

For  from  the  really  historical  point  of  view 

1  John  19  :  26-30. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  ;oi. 

the  following,  to  my  mind,  is  certain  for  a  man 
whose  judgments  are  unbiassed: 

Firstly,  the  Gospel  of  John  cannot  have  been 
written  later  than  about  no  A.  D.,  as  Harnack, 
too,  admits,1  although  he  attributes  the  author- 
ship to  another  John,  who  is  not  the  apostle. 
For  the  Gospel  is  known  to  Justin  Martyr,2  who 
was  converted  to  Christianity  at  Ephesus  about 
130;  and  before  117  the  letters  of  Ignatius 
show  that  Ignatius  was  influenced  by  the  say- 
ings of  Jesus  reported  in  the  fourth  Gospel.3 
The  tradition  that  the  apostle  John,  still  living  in 
the  year  98,  wrote  this  Gospel  in  his  old  age,4  can- 
not, therefore,  as  far  as  the  date  of  the  Gospel's 
origin  is  concerned,  be  proved  to  be  incorrect. 

Secondly,  the  tradition  that  John  the  apostle 
wrote  the  Gospel  is  old.  Polykrates  of  Ephesus,5 
about  190,  and  Irenaeus,6  about  185,  are  not 
the  first  witnesses.  This  tradition  existed  when 
about  170  the  so-called  Alogoi  opposed  it,7  and 

1  Chronologie,  etc.,  I,  674. — 2  Th.  Zahn,  Geschichte  des  Neutesta- 
mentlichen  Kanons,  I,  Erlangen,  1888,  pp.  516-533;  admitted  by 
Harnack  (Chronologic,  I,  674). — 3Comp.  P.  Dietze,  Die  Brief e 
des  Ignatius  und  das  Johannes  evangelism  (Theol.  Studien  u. 
Kritiken,  78,  1905,  pp.  563-603). — 4  Irenseus,  3,  3,  4;  comp.  3, 
i,  2. — B  Eusebius,  PL  E.,  5,  24. — 6  Comp.  not.  4. — 7  Epiphanius, 
Hczr.,  51,  3  ff.;  comp.  Th.  Zahn,  Geschichte  des  Neutest.  Kanons, 
I,  252-254. 


102  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

even  Justin  Martyr  was  acquainted  with  it1 — 
a  fact  which  ought  not  to  have  been  doubted. 
Moreover,  this  tradition  reaches  back  directly  to 
the  time  when  the  Gospel  first  became  known, 
for  the  appendix  to  the  fourth  Gospel,  without 
which  the  Gospel  was  probably  never  known 
in  the  church,  expressly  names  the  disciple 
whom  Jesus  loved,  and  thereby  it  means  John,2 
as  the  author  of  the  Gospel.3 

Thirdly,  a  true  historical  method  demands 
that  we  should  carefully  test  the  correctness  of 
the  sketch  of  the  life  of  Jesus  given  in  the  fourth 
Gospel,  apart  from  the  question  of  its  author- 
ship. For,  even  if  the  author  or  authors  of  the 
appendix  were  mistaken  in  assigning  the  Gospel 
to  John  the  apostle,  we  should  still  have  to  ex- 
amine whether  its  statements  about  frequent  so- 
journs of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  might  not  be  based 
on  good  traditions. 

The  latter  I  leave  aside  for  the  present  mo- 
ment, as  belonging  rather  to  historical  criticism. 
The  manner  in  which  the  two  other  facts  have 
been  dealt  with  in  the  liberal  Jesus-research  dur- 
ing the  last  seventy  years  has  proved  as  clearly 

1Comp.  not.  2,  p.  101. — 2  Admitted  even  by  Jiilicher,  Einlei- 
tung  in  das  N.  T.,  5th  edition,  1906,  p.  370. — 3  John  21  :  24. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  103 

as  possible  that  liberal  Jesus-research  by  its  pre- 
suppositions is  prevented  from  being  able  to 
recognize  unpleasant  facts  impartially. 

Baur  placed  the  fourth  Gospel  as  late  as  180. 
Step  by  step  critics  retreated  from  this  untena- 
ble position.  Even  to-day,  however,  some  schol- 
ars think  that  the  Gospel  was  not  written  before 
130  A.  D. 

And  the  tradition  regarding  the  author  of  the 
Gospel  has  become  a  real  martyr  in  the  hands 
of  liberal  critics.  Even  the  most  improbable 
statements  of  later  writers  have  been  believed  by 
some  scholars  in  order  to  render  this  tradition 
suspicious.  A  notice  of  Papias,  e.  g.,  certainly 
not  handed  down  in  its  correct  form,  was  re- 
garded as  evidence  proving  that  John  was  mur- 
dered by  the  Jews.  And  thus  they  fancied  they 
could  refute  the  tradition  of  John's  residence  in 
Asia  Minor,  closely  connected  with  the  tradi- 
tion about  the  origin  of  the  Gospel.1  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  these  scholars  had  no  honest 
desire  for  truth.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  this  very 
same  desire  for  truth  that  must  lead  them  to 

1  Comp.  J.  H.  Bernard,  The  Traditions  as  to  the  Death  of  John 
the  son  of  Zebedee  (The  Irish  Church  Quarterly,  1908,  pp.  51-66); 
Th.  Zahn,  Einleitung  in  das  N.  T.,  II,  Leipsic,  1900,  p.  467. 


io4  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

impossible  assertions  about  Saint  John  as  long  as 
they  assume  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  one.  For  they  correctly  realize  that,  if 
John  had  lived  at  Ephesus  for  many  years  in  his 
old  age,  the  tradition  that  he  was  the  author  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  could  not  easily  be  pushed 
aside. 

Of  late  the  Johannine  question  has  entered  a 
new  phase.  Up  to  the  present  time  the  unity  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  has  been  almost  an  axiom. 
Since  the  time  of  Baur  this  Gospel  has  appeared 
to  scholars  as  the  coat  of  Christ  "without  seam," 
which  could  not  be  divided.  But  during  the 
last  four  years  especially,  F.  Spitta  of  Strassburg, 
Edouard  Schwartz  the  excellent  philologist  of 
Freiburg,  Wellhausen,  and  Wendt,  who  held  these 
views  for  many  years  (since  1886),  have  tried  to 
prove  that  we  can  discern  several  sources,  or,  at 
least,  different  layers,  in  the  fourth  Gospel.1  Some 

1  F.  Spitta,  Das  Johannesevangelium  als  Quelle  der  Geschichte 
Jesu,  Gottingen,  1910 ;  E.  Schwartz,  Aporien  im  vierten  Evangelium 
(Nachrichten  der  Gesellschaft  der  Wissenschaften,  philos.-hist. 
Klasse,  1907,  p.  343  /.,  1908,  pp.  115  /.,  i49/-,497/-);  J- Well- 
hausen, Erweiterungen  im  vierten  Evangelium,  Berlin,  1907;  Das 
Evangelium  Johannis,  Berlin,  1908;  H.  H.  Wendt,  Die  Schichten 
im  vierten  Evangelium,  Gottingen,  1911;  W.  Bousset,  1st  das  vierte 
Evangelium  eine  litter  arise  he  Einheit?  (Theologische  Rundschau, 
Tubingen,  1909,  pp.  1-12  and  39-64).  Comp.  C.  R.  Gregory, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  105 

of  the  observations  made  by  these  scholars  are 
not  wholly  wrong,  to  my  mind.  I  think  we  cannot 
help  recognizing  that  the  first  copy  of  the  original 
author  (in  my  opinion,  John  the  apostle)  per- 
haps suffered  alterations  and  additions  from  one 
or  more  hands  before  it  took  the  shape  in  which 
the  Gospel  now  lies  before  us,  perhaps  even  be- 
fore it  had  reached  the  stage  of  a  uniform  whole.1 
But  the  form  in  which  these  theories  are  offered 
cannot  be  considered  as  acceptable.  Of  Spitta's 
and  Wendt/s  thoughts  perhaps  it  may  be  said 
that  they,  more  than  the  earlier  liberal  scholars, 
do  more  justice  to  the  important,  though  in 
many  respects  puzzling,  source  which  we  have 
in  the  fourth  Gospel.  But  the  statements  of 
Edouard  Schwartz  and  Wellhausen,  in  my  opin- 
ion, are  but  another  illustration  of  the  fact  that 
the  presupposition  of  a  purely  human  life  of 
Jesus  forces  literary  criticism  to  assertions  with 
regard  to  the  sources  which  can  only  be  regarded 
as  mistakes  of  learned  sagacity. 

Wellhausen  und  Johannes,  Leipsic,  1910;  Th.  Zahn,  Das  Evange- 
lium  des  Johannes  unter  den  Hdnden  seiner  neuesten  Kritiker,  Neue 
kirchliche  Zeitschrift,  XXII,  Erlangen,  1911,  pp.  28-58,  83-115; 
A.  Juncker,  Zur  neuesten  Johanneskritik,  Fortrag  usw.,  Halle,  1912. 
1A  similar  view  seems  to  be  held  by  my  colleague,  Professor 
Paul  Feine  (comp.  his  Theologie  des  Neuen  Testaments,  2d  edi- 
tion, Leipsic,  1911,  p.  515). 


io6  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Now,  after  having  given  some  remarks  about 
the  Johannine  question,  I  return  to  the  general 
criticism  of  the  Gospels.  If  the  fourth  Gospel 
is  more  than  a  fiction  dealing  arbitrarily  with 
the  synoptic  tradition,  then  it  becomes  perfectly 
evident  that  the  synoptic  tradition,  apart  from 
the  sayings  of  Jesus  which  are  attested  by  the 
"collection  of  sayings,"  is  but  one  form  of  the 
tradition  which  lived  in  the  Christian  commu- 
nity at  that  time,  and  liberal  Jesus-research 
appears  as  not  doing  justice  to  the  sources  when 
wholly  rejecting  the  fourth  Gospel  by  means  of 
a  so-called  literary  "criticism." 

The  same  objection  must  be  made  against  the 
manner  in  which  liberal  theology  answers  the 
question  how  much  of  our  tradition  about  Jesus 
is  to  be  regarded  as  credible  in  its  details.  This 
question  falls  outside  the  scope  of  the  criticism  of 
the  sources.  It  is  already  part  of  historical  recon- 
struction. In  its  sphere  we  may  now  distinguish 
historical  criticism,  which  tries  to  ascertain  what 
really  happened,  and  historical  description.  It 
remains  for  me  to  show  that  the  liberal  Jesus- 
research  has  proved  itself  and  must  prove  itself 
in  both  to  be  unable  to  do  full  justice  to  the 
sources. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  107 

I  shall  first  confine  myself  to  the  historical 
criticism.  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  two  facts: 
first,  that  the  inability  referred  to  shows  itself 
when  the  fourth  Gospel,  too,  is  taken  into  con- 
sideration; second,  that  it  also  appears  when 
the  synoptic  story  only  is  dealt  with. 

The  narration  of  John  differs  from  that  of  the 
synoptics  —  apart  from  the  character  of  the  say- 
ings of  Jesus  —  not  only  in  dividing  his  public 
activity,  as  we  have  seen,  between  Galilee  and 
Judea,  and  in  extending  it,  in  connection  there- 
with, over  two  years  and  a  quarter,  but  also  in 
making  a  different  statement  about  the  last  day 
of  Jesus.  For,  while  according  to  the  synoptics 
Jesus  still  partook  of  the  Passover  meal  with 
his  disciples  on  Thursday  evening,1  so  that  this 
Thursday  was  the  I4th  of  the  Jewish  month 
Nisan,  the  very  day  of  the  Passover,  and  Jesus 
died  on  the  I5th,  the  story  of  John  makes  it 
perfectly  clear  that  the  last  meal  of  Jesus  with 
his  disciples  on  the  Thursday  evening  could  not 
have  been  the  Passover.  For  he  tells  us2  that 
the  Jewish  accusers  of  Jesus  on  the  next  day 


.  Mark  14  :  12-16;   Matt.  26  :  17-19;   Luke  22  :  7-15. 
2  John  18:28. 


io8  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

went  not  into  the  judgment  hall  (of  Pilate),  lest 
they  should  be  defiled,  but  that  they  might  eat  the 
Passover.  Thus,  according  to  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel, Jesus  died  on  the  I4th  of  Nisan. 

There  is  also  a  difference  expressly  emphasized 
in  the  fourth  Gospel  with  regard  to  the  begin- 
ning of  Jesus'  public  activity.  According  to 
Mark  and  Matthew  Jesus  went  to  Galilee  in 
order  to  begin  his  public  activity  after  that  John 
the  Baptist  was  put  in  prison.1  John,  however, 
states  expressly  with  regard  to  the  first  activity 
of  Jesus :  John  was  not  yet  cast  into  prison.2 

The  latter  notice,  which  is  generally  recog- 
nized as  an  intentional  correction  of  the  state- 
ment in  Mark  and  Matthew,  cannot  possibly 
be  understood  as  being  a  piece  of  fiction  with 
a  distinct  tendency.  We  have  here,  therefore,  a 
tradition  or  a  personal  reminiscence,  of  whose 
correctness,  in  spite  of  its  opposition  to  Mark 
and  Matthew,  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gospel 
was  convinced.  Unbiassed  research  ought  to 
give  preference  to  this  statement  above  that  of 
Mark,  because  it  is  given  with  such  confidence 
and  because  it  is  supported  by  the  fact  that  Luke 

1  Mark  I  :  14;  Matt.  4  :  12. — 2  John  3  :  24. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  109 

has  not  taken  over  the  notice  of  Mark.  But 
the  advocates  of  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus 
may  not  assume  the  fourth  evangelist  capable  of 
having  more  accurate  knowledge  in  any  respect 
than  Mark,  although,  as  we  have  seen,  nothing 
supports  the  belief  that  Mark  had  a  more  inde- 
pendent acquaintance  with  the  life  of  Jesus. 

Regarding  the  differences  about  the  day  on 
which  Jesus  died,  we  are  in  a  similar  position. 
Only  lately  Heitmiiller  admitted  that  the  sy- 
noptic narrative  is  very  improbable.1  We  can- 
not imagine  all  the  trouble  taking  place  on  the 
very  day  of  the  Passover.  Simon  of  Cyrene, 
too,  is  coming  from  the  field  at  the  time  when 
Jesus  is  led  to  Golgotha.2  Was  this  possible  on 
the  day  of  the  Passover? 

But  sooner  than  give  preference  in  such  an 
important  matter  to  the  fourth  Gospel,  which 
is  otherwise  not  recognized  as  a  source,  liberal 
scholars  make  every  possible,  and  even  impos- 
sible, effort.  Declaring,  as  the  Tubingen  school 
already  had  done,  that  the  death  of  Jesus,  in 
the  fourth  Gospel,  was  laid  on  the  I4th  of  Nisan, 

1  Artikel  '''  Jesus  Christus,"  Handworterbuch,  III,  369. 

2  Mark  14  :  21. 


i  io  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

in  order  that  Jesus  might  appear  as  the  true 
Passover  lamb,  and  admitting  that  the  account 
of  the  synoptic  Gospels  is  even  less  credible, 
Heitmiiller  says1  we  have  to  abandon  all  hope 
of  fixing  the  exact  date,  and  to  be  satisfied  with 
knowing  that  Jesus  was  crucified  shortly  before 
the  feast.  Thus,  these  critics  follow  neither  of  the 
accounts  that  have  come  down  to  us.  They  know 
better  than  both  of  them !  And  all  this  to  escape 
the  necessity  of  agreeing  with  the  fourth  Gospel! 
This  may  be  rendered  inevitable  by  the  presup- 
positions of  scholars  who  acknowledge  only  a 
purely  human  life  of  Jesus,  but  I  cannot  con- 
sider it  the  correct  method. 

The  situation  is  practically  the  same  in  the 
case  of  the  more  important  differences  with  re- 
gard to  the  scene  of  Jesus'  public  activity.  A 
word  of  Jesus  in  the  "collection  of  sayings" — 
Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  how  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together  even  as  a  hen  gath- 
ereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would 
not'1 — speaks  volumes  in  favor  of  John's  state- 
ment. And  what  the  synoptic  Gospels  tell  us  of 
Jesus'  doings  and  sayings  in  Jerusalem  hardly 

1L.  c.,  p.  370. — 2Matt.  23  :  37;  Luke  13  :  24. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  in 

fits  into  the  frame  of  the  few  days  during  which 
Jesus,  according  to  them,  dwelt  in  Jerusalem; 
nay,  much  that  they  relate  brings  us  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Jesus  was  better  known  in  Jerusalem 
than  he  could  have  been  according  to  the  synoptic 
story.1  Nevertheless,  the  scholars  who  acknowl- 
edge only  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus  are  forced 
by  their  anti-Johannine  interest  to  abide  by  the 
framework  of  Mark.  When  they  come  to  the 
appearances  of  the  risen  Lord  this  is  still  more 
necessary,  although  Luke,  too,  reports  appear- 
ances only  in  Jerusalem.  Their  presuppositions 
make  impartial  historical  criticism  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  impossible. 

But  even  as  regards  the  synoptics,  the  condi- 
tion is  the  same. 

I  do  not  wish  to  spend  any  time  on  the  mir- 
acles related  by  the  synoptics.  For  here  many 
liberal  scholars  try  to  retain  as  much  as  pos- 
sible by  means  of  rationalistic  interpretations. 
We  have  to  attend  principally  to  the  treatment 
of  the  synoptic  speeches  of  Jesus. 

Only  one  other  point  may  first  be  men- 
tioned. All  the  synoptic  Gospels  presuppose 

1Comp.  Mark  14  :  14,  29,  43;  Luke  23  :  27. 


ii2  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

that  the  twelve  disciples  were  still  in  Jerusalem 
on  Easter  morning.  According  to  Luke,  they  do 
not  leave  Jerusalem  at  all  till  Pentecost.1  Ac- 
cording to  Mark  and  Matthew  the  women  are 
bidden  at  the  grave  of  Jesus  to  go  to  see  them 
and  send  them  to  Galilee.2  In  spite  of  this,  the 
liberal  Jesus-research  knows  that  the  disciples 
fled  to  Galilee  immediately  after  the  capture  of 
Jesus.  Not  a  single  source  says  so.  But  liberal 
Jesus-research  must  so  assume  in  order  that 
the  disciples  may  be  far  from  the  grave  on  the 
third  day.  Judging  by  what  I  understand  of 
historical  method,  such  criticism  is  historically 
unjustifiable  because  it  violates  the  sources  in- 
stead of  doing  justice  to  them. 

We  meet  with  the  same  kind  of  criticism  in 
the  treatment  of  the  words  of  Jesus  reported  by 
the  synoptic  Gospels.  All  these  words  are 
handed  down  by  people  who  believed  in  Christ 
— that  is  also  the  case  with  the  "collection  of 
sayings."  We  may  admit,  therefore,  quite  gen- 
erally that  they  may  have  been  altered  by  the 
views  of  the  community.  Moreover,  in  a  few 
cases  this  fact  cannot  be  in  the  least  denied. 

1  Luke  24  :  49. — 2  Mark  16  :  7;  Matt.  28  :  7. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  113 

Thus,  to  give  one  example,  no  sensible  man  will 
deny  that,  by  the  side  of  the  feeding  of  the  five 
thousand  (Mark  6:35  /.),  the  feeding  of  the 
four  thousand  (Mark  8 :  i  /.)  represents  a 
doublet  of  tradition.  Luke  already  felt  this;  he 
omitted  the  second  story  of  Mark.  But  if  the  sec- 
ond story  is  unhistoric,  then  the  words  of  Jesus 
(Mark  8  : 19/.)  When  I  brake  the  five  loaves  among 
the  five  thousand,  how  many  baskets  full  of  broken 
pieces  took  ye  up  ?  And  when  the  seven  among 
the  four  thousand,  how  many  basketfuls  of  broken 
pieces  took  ye  up?  cannot  possibly  be  anything 
else  than  a  fiction  of  the  evangelist  or  of  the  tra- 
dition he  followed.  Consequently,  it  is  evident 
that,  among  the  sayings  that  are  handed  down 
to  us  as  words  of  Jesus,  there  are  at  least  sev- 
eral which  are  erroneously  ascribed  to  Jesus  in 
the  Gospels,  as  they  originated  in  the  thoughts 
of  the  later  community.  But  which  of  the  bib- 
lical words  of  Jesus  are  reliable,  which  not? 
Wellhausen  is  highly  suspicious  even  as  regards 
the  sayings  of  the  "  collection"  and  the  parables. 
The  tradition  about  the  deeds,  he  says,  is  more 
reliable;  the  words  were  altered  by  the  views  of 
the  community.  Schweitzer,  on  the  other  hand, 


n4  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

manoeuvres  with  the  eschatologically  colored 
words  of  Jesus  in  Mark  and  Matthew  as  if  he 
had  accurately  dated  short-hand  reports  at  his 
disposal.  On  the  one  hand,  the  parable  of  the 
prodigal  son  in  Luke  15  is  regarded  undoubt- 
edly as  one  of  the  most  genuine,  because  it 
knows  nothing  of  a  mediatorial  office  of  Jesus. 
Wellhausen,  on  the  other  hand,  is  exceedingly 
skeptical  in  the  case  of  the  speeches  of  Jesus  re- 
ported only  by  Luke.  The  Gospel  of  Luke  has, 
as  he  says  somewhat  indelicately,  a  marked  par- 
tiality for  outcast  people.1  Is  this  method  of 
judging  by  individual  taste  historically  permissi- 
ble ?  The  answer  is  given  by  the  question  itself. 
Critics  have  tried  to  introduce  rules  for  pick- 
ing out  the  genuine  words.  As  basis,  says  Heit- 
miiller,2  we  have  to  take  all  the  materials  that 
are  not  in  accordance  with  the  belief,  theology, 
worship,  and  customs  of  the  ancient  Christian 
community  or,  at  any  rate,  do  not  completely 

1 J.  Wellhausen,  Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten  Evangelien,  p.  69: 
"Lukas  hat  eine  ausgesprochene  Forliebe  nicht  bloss  fur  die  gedriick- 
ten,  verkommenen  und  missleiteten  o^Acc,  sondern  fur  venuorfene 
Individuen;  er  treibt  Wucher  mit  dem  Spruch :  die  Gesunden  bediirfen 
des  Arztes  nicht,  sondern  die  Kranken."  In  his  Das  Evangelium 
Lucae,  Berlin,  1904,  however,  he  deals  with  the  parable  of  the 
prodigal  son  (pp.  81-85)  without  uttering  direct  doubts  about  its 
authenticity. — 2  L.  c.,  p.  361. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  115 

agree  with  it.  We  may  absolutely  trust  all  this 
and  everything  that  is  organically  united  there- 
with. On  the  other  hand,  we  must  pass  the 
verdict  "not  genuine"  wherever  a  story  or  a 
word  agrees  too  obviously  with  the  thoughts 
and  customs  and  the  dogmatic  and  eschato- 
logical  wants  of  the  later  community.  This 
sounds  very  circumspect,  and  certainly  contains 
correct  ideas.  A  word  of  Jesus  like  that  in  the 
"collection  of  sayings,"  The  Son  of  Man  came 
eating  and  drinking,  and  they  say,  Behold  a  man 
gluttonous  and  a  zvinebibber,  a  friend  of  publicans 
and  sinners,1  would  be  incomprehensible  as  a 
fiction  of  the  community.  The  accurate  proph- 
ecies of  his  resurrection,  on  the  contrary,  which 
the  synoptics — but  not  John — ascribe  to  Jesus2 
were  probably  first  formulated  in  the  commu- 
nity. Yet  we  cannot  make  use  of  this  canon  as 
a  -general  rule.  For,  in  the  first  place,  if  we  con- 
sider with  how  much  freedom  tradition  treated 
the  words  of  Jesus  (as  we  can  see  on  many  oc- 
casions), we  shall  not  at  all  expect  a  word  of 
Jesus  in  the  Gospels  which  does  not  agree  with 

JMatt.  II  :  19  =  Luke  7  :  34. 

2  Mark  8:31=  Matt.   16  :  21  =  Luke  9  :  22;   Mark  9:31  = 
Matt.  17  :  23  (omitted,  Luke  9  :  44). 


n6  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  belief  of  the  reporter.  If  we  interpret  any 
word  in  this  way  we  have  to  fear  that  we  mis- 
interpret it.  And,  secondly,  it  would  be  con- 
trary to  all  sound  logic  if  we  suspected  those 
words  of  Jesus  which  agree  most  obviously  with 
the  belief  of  the  ancient  Christians  simply  for 
this  reason.  For  there  was  no  greater  authority 
for  these  Christians  than  Jesus.  We  are  also  in 
practice  brought  to  evident  absurdities  if  we  ap- 
ply this  rule.  Just  one  example  of  the  two  pos- 
sibilities: one  of  the  most  genuine  words  of 
Jesus,  according  to  liberal  Jesus-research,  is  the 
prayer  in  Gethsemane:  Father,  take  away  this 
cup  from  me!  Nevertheless,  not  what  I  will,  but 
what  thou  wilt.1  For  people  say  it  does  not 
agree  with  the  belief  of  later  days  that  Jesus 
sacrificed  himself  voluntarily.  But  from  whom 
could  the  disciples  have  heard  of  this  prayer? 
Jesus  went  forward  a  little  from  them  and  they 
fell  asleep.2  And  liberal  critics  do  not  know  of 
any  narratives  the  risen  Lord  told  his  disciples. 
If  somebody  were  to  consider  this  prayer  in 
Gethsemane  as  a  later  fiction,  that  would  be 
quite  conceivable  from  a  methodic  point  of  view. 

1  Mark  14  :  36=Matt.  26  :  39;  Luke  22  142. — 2  Mark  14  :  35,37. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  117 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  what  agrees  more  with 
the  belief  of  later  days  than  the  conviction  that 
Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Messiah,  and  that  the  end 
of  the  world  was  impending!  Ought  not,  there- 
fore, if  the  aforenamed  rule  is  admitted  to  be 
right,  all  the  sayings  of  Jesus  that  testify  to  his 
Messiahship,  and  all  eschatological  speeches,  to 
be  regarded  with  suspicion? 

This  conclusion  really  has  been  drawn;  other 
liberal  scholars  start  from  this  very  point,  as  we 
saw  in  the  last  lecture.  Scholars  who  acknowl- 
edge only  a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus  do  not 
rise  above  arbitrary  results  because  they  cannot 
make  any  use  of  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  and 
do  not  have,  all  in  all,  another  standard  for 
eliminating  what  they  consider  not  genuine, 
than  their  individual  taste. 

This,  naturally,  influences  the  whole  descrip- 
tion, the  whole  conception  of  Jesus,  to  which  we 
have  thus  come  without  noticing  it.  Scholars 
who  acknowledge  only  a  purely  human  life  of 
Jesus  stand  here  between  a  Scylla  and  a  Cha- 
rybdis.  If  they  resolutely  eliminate  what  they 
cannot  assimilate,  the  whole  tradition  becomes 
suspected,  and,  as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Wrede 


n8  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

and  Wellhausen,  they  do  not  retain  enough  ma- 
terial for  a  total  conception  of  Jesus,  not  to  say 
for  a  description  of  his  life.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  trust  these  traditions,  they  have  to 
take  much  into  account  that  does  not  agree 
with  a  purely  human  self-consciousness  in  Jesus. 
Then  let  them  try,  as  some  have  done,  to  lay 
stress  on  the  eschatological  thoughts  of  Jesus 
in  order  to  find  the  frame  for  the  words  and 
deeds,  which  surpass  human  measure,  in  a  high- 
flown  Messianic  consciousness  of  majesty  far 
exceeding  actual  reality.  Nevertheless,  they  do 
not  find  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  Jesus- 
problem.  For  a  self-consciousness  of  this  kind 
will  have  an  abnormal  look  about  it.  The  next 
step,  to  assume  psychic  abnormality  in  Jesus, 
is  then  an  easy  one. 

Thus,  the  Jesus-research,  acknowledging  but 
a  purely  human  life  of  Jesus,  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion either:  We  know  next  to  nothing  about 
Jesus,  or:  Jesus  was  a  religious  enthusiast. 

The  former  of  these  two  positions  is  not  in 
harmony  with  our  most  definite  knowledge,  viz., 
that  there  was  a  growing  community  shortly 
after  the  death  of  Jesus  which  highly  revered 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  119 

Jesus,  and  which  must,  therefore,  have  had  a 
lively  interest  in  his  words  and  deeds.  The 
latter  does  not  agree  with  the  impression  which 
the  deepest  and,  therefore,  the  genuine  words  of 
Jesus  make  upon  us. 

But  if  neither  of  these  two  views,  which  are 
the  only  consistent  ones,  is  tenable,  then  the 
error  must  lie  in  the  assumption  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  can  be  understood  from  a  purely 
historical  point  of  view  or — which  is  the  same 
thing — that  his  life  was  a  purely  human  one. 

That  the  error  is  really  to  be  found  there,  be- 
cause that  presupposition  is  untenable,  I  shall 
try  to  show  in  the  next  lecture. 


IV 

JESUS  NOT  A  MERE  MAN 

TN  my  last  lecture  I  tried  to  show  that  the 
liberal  Jesus-research,  resting  on  the  as- 
sumption necessary  for  historical  science,  that 
the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely  human  one,  can- 
not prevail  before  the  tribunal  of  historical 
science  itself,  because  it  does  not  do  justice  to 
the  sources  and  is  not  tenable  in  itself.  It  is 
bound  either  to  come  to  such  a  skeptical  atti- 
tude toward  the  sources  that  it  is  forced  to  give 
up  all  hope  of  obtaining  a  picture  of  the  person 
and  the  activity  of  Christ — and  that  is  not  in 
harmony  with  our  most  definite  knowledge,  viz., 
that  there  existed  a  community  shortly  after  the 
death  of  Jesus  which  revered  him  very  highly 
and  must  have  taken  a  lively  interest  in  his 
words  and  deeds.  Or,  if  it  puts  more  confidence 
in  the  sources,  Jesus  and  his  deeds  and  his  experi- 
ences must  seem  to  exceed  the  ordinary  human 
measure  so  far  that  the  only  possible  frame  for 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH?  121 

his  self-consciousness  might  be  found  in  a  highly 
exaggerated  Messianic  consciousness  of  majesty, 
which  no  longer  agrees  with  normal  human  life. 
Then  Jesus  appears  as  a  religious  enthusiast, 
and  it  seems  natural  to  ask  whether  he  was  psy- 
chically sound.  But  such  a  view  does  not  agree 
with  the  deepest  and  greatest,  and  therefore 
certainly  most  genuine,  words  of  Jesus  which  we 
have  in  the  Gospels. 

Now,  if  neither  of  these  attitudes  toward  the 
problem,  which  the  tradition  about  Jesus  sets 
us,  although  they  are  by  themselves  historically 
possible  and  consistent,  is  tenable,  then  the  as- 
sumption must  be  wrong  that  historical  science 
can  solve  the  problem  of  the  person  and  life  of 
Jesus,  and  the  presupposition  necessary  for  his- 
torical science,  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  one,  must  be  untenable.  That  this  is 
the  case  I  shall  to-day  try  to  prove. 

Here  again  I  wish  to  make  some  introductory 
remarks.  I  once  had  a  private  conversation 
about  Jesus-research  with  my  honored  teacher 
and  friend,  Adolf  Harnack,  and  when  I  expressed 
similar  views  to  those  at  the  end  of  my  third  lect- 
ure, which  I  have  reproduced  to-day,  Harnack 


122  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

said  to  me  in  his  witty  manner,  "That  is  gath- 
ering apologetic  figs  of  skeptical  thistles."  That 
is  not  my  intention.  Some  conservative  the- 
ologians, it  is  true,  decline  scientific  historical 
research  about  Jesus  for  no  other  reason  than 
because  they  wish,  after  rejecting  historical  crit- 
icism, to  stick  to  the  whole  tradition  about  Jesus 
as  something  certain  for  the  believer.  This  is — 
in  most  cases  not  subjectively,  but  still  objec- 
tively— insincere.  It  is  true  that  belief  has  its 
place  where  history  has  to  abandon  all  hope  of 
mastering  the  biblical  tradition  with  the  assump- 
tions and  means  at  its  disposal.  Just  as  science 
and  religion  do  not  exclude  one  another,  because 
the  sphere  of  religion  is  different  from  that  of 
science  and  perfectly  inaccessible  to  science. 
Nevertheless,  we  must  concede  that  faith  cannot 
accept  anything  that  does  in  no  way  agree  with 
natural  science — I  mean  science  that  is  conscious 
of  its  due  bounds.  Even  the  most  earnest  be- 
liever would  not,  for  instance,  because  he  is  in  a 
great  hurry,  pray  to  God  to  make  the  day  six 
hours  longer.  In  the  same  manner,  nobody  is  en- 
titled to  think  that  anything  could  or  should  be 
considered  to  be  true  by  faith  that  historical  sci- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  123 

ence  through  the  means  at  its  disposal  is  forced 
to  recognize  as  unhistorical.  And  we  have  such 
material  that  is  unhistorical  in  this  sense  in  the 
biblical  tradition.  I  shall  give  three  examples. 

The  sentence  of  the  so-called  apostolic  creed, 
born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  is  based  only  on  Matthew 
I  and  Luke  I.1  The  other  New  Testament  writ- 
ings know  nothing  of  a  virgin  birth.  Moreover, 
there  are  not  a  few  passages  which  speak  openly 
of  Jesus'  parents2  or  of  his  descent  from  the  seed 
of  David.3  Even  in  the  Gospel  of  John  Jesus  twice 
is  called  the  son  of  Joseph,*  once  by  the  murmur- 
ing Jews,  once  by  one  of  the  first  disciples.  Add 
to  this,  that  criticism  of  the  sources  shows  Mat- 
thew I  and  Luke  i  to  be  later  strata  of  the  ev- 
angelical tradition.  Under  these  circumstances 
I  think  it  is  the  duty  of  truthfulness  to  state 
openly  that  the  virgin  birth,  perhaps,  or  even 
probably,  arose  out  of  fabulous  tradition. 

This  is  also  the  case  with  the  story  of  Christ's 
ascension  forty  days  after  his  resurrection.  It 
is  related  only  in  Acts  i.5  None  of  the  Gospels 
mentions  an  ascension  of  this  kind.  John  and 

JMatt.  1:18-20;  Luke  1:34,  35. — ZE.  g.,  Matt.  13:55; 
Luke  2  :  27,  41,  43,  comp.  2  :  33,  48. — 3Matt.  i  :  i;  John  7:  42; 
Rom.  1:3;  II  Tim.  2  :  8. — 4  John  i :  46;  6  :  42. — 5Acts  1:3. 


i24  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Paul  seem  to  place  the  ascension  immediately 
after  the  resurrection;1  and  as  late  as  about  130 
A.  D.  a  non-biblical  Christian  document,  the  so- 
called  letter  of  Barnabas,  says:  We  celebrate  the 
eighth  day  (the  Sunday)  in  great  joy,  for  on  that 
day  Jesus  rose  from  the  dead  and  ascended  into 
heaven  after  revealing  himself.'2'  The  ascension 
just  forty  days  after  Easter  is  but  a  legend. 

And,  to  come  to  the  third  example,  it  is  also 
undoubtedly  true  that  the  reports  of  the  appear- 
ances of  the  risen  Lord  —  in  Luke  and  the  Acts;3 
I  only  mention  the  meals  of  the  risen  Jesus  —  have 
even  within  the  New  Testament  become  more 
massive  and  rough  than  is  in  keeping  with  the 
oldest  view  about  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.4 

I  know  that  such  statements  are  even  to-day 
considered  as  offsprings  of  infidelity  by  many 
Christians.  But  nevertheless  the  words  of  Paul 
remain  true  :  We  can  do  nothing  against  the  truth, 
but  for  the  truth.b  It  is,  therefore,  in  my  opinion, 
the  duty  of  all  honest  friends  of  the  truth  among 
the  leading  Christians  to  accustom  their  con- 
gregations to  the  thought  that  not  the  whole 


20  :  17;  Rom.  10  :  6,  7;  Eph.  4  :  8-10.  —  2Ep.  Barnab. 
15:9.—  3  Luke  24:43;  Acts  10:41.  —  4I  Cor.  15:5-8;  Gal. 
I  :  16.  —  6II  Cor.  13  :  8. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  125 

biblical  tradition  about  Jesus  is  undoubtedly 
historical.  More  than  a  century  ago  a  good 
German  Christian,  an  opponent  of  rationalism, 
Matthias  Claudius,  who  is  highly  esteemed  in 
Christian  spheres  up  to  the  present  day,  said, 
referring  to  the  biblical  reports  of  Jesus:  In- 
deed, all  that  the  Bible  tells  of  him,  all  the  fine 
legends  and  fine  stories,  are  not  to  be  mistaken 
for  him  (the  Lord  himself),  they  are  but  witnesses 
of  him,  only  bells  on  his  coat — but  nevertheless  the 
best  treasure  we  have  on  earth.1  If  even  the  hon- 
orable Claudius,  in  whose  time  Bible  criticism 
lay  still  in  its  cradle,  could  openly  speak  of 
legends  that  are  told  about  Jesus  in  the  Bible, 
it  is,  indeed,  the  duty  of  us,  children  of  a  more 
advanced  century,  not  to  mistake  the  bells  for 
the  person  but  to  educate  our  youth  and  our 
grown-up  fellow-Christians,  in  this  respect  too, 
in  that  freedom  which  becomes  our  faith. 

This  is  never  to  be  forgotten  whenever  we  deal 
with  the  miracles  told  in  the  Gospels.     That 


1  Werke,  merter  Teil,  Briefe  an  Andres,  erster  Brief  (Werke,  II, 
4th  edition,  Cannstadt,  1835,  p.  in):  "Was  in  der  Bibel  von 
ihm  steht,  all  die  herrlichen  Sagen  und  herrlichen  Geschichten,  sind 
freilich  nicht  er,  sondern  nur  Zeugnisse  von  ihm,  nur  Glocklein  am 
Leibrock;  aber  dock  das  Beste,  was  wir  auf  Erden  haben" 


126  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Jesus  healed  many  sick  people  in  a  manner  which 
seemed  marvellous  to  his  contemporaries  and 
which  would,  perhaps,  remain  unintelligible  for 
our  century  too,  is  a  fact  which  even  the  liberal 
Jesus-research  recognizes.  And  Christians  who 
have  a  greater  opinion  of  Jesus  will  believe  him 
capable  of  greater  things.  But  nobody  who  is 
acquainted  with  historical  research  can  deny 
that  we  can  even  within  our  Gospels  discover 
a  dash  of  exaggeration  of  the  marvellous  which 
later  on  led  to  the  fictions  of  the  apocryphal  Gos- 
pels. Tradition  always  exaggerates,  as  I  showed 
by  an  illustration  from  modern  history  in  the 
last  lecture.1  About  some  miracles  told  in  the 
Gospels  we  may  assert  with  a  certain  amount 
of  assurance  that  tradition  reported  here  what 
never  happened  in  this  manner.  I  mention  only 
the  story  of  the  many  bodies  of  the  saints  which 
arose  and  came  out  of  the  graves  when  the  earth 
did  quake  at  the  moment  of  Christ's  death,  and 
the  other  that  the  veil  of  the  temple  was  rent  in 
the  same  moment.2  And  these  examples,  which 
hardly  any  one  will  find  fault  with,  are  not  the 
only  ones.  I  consider  it  my  duty  to  say  this  too, 

1  Above,  p.  92. — 2  Matt.  27  :  51-53. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  127 

that,  in  spite  of  my  position  with  regard  to  the 
Gospel  of  John,  some  of  the  miracles  told  in  that 
Gospel1  call  up  grave  doubts  within  me.  Exag- 
gerations, insufficient  acquaintance  with  the  so- 
called  natural  laws,  and  wrong  interpretation 
of  metaphoric  language  undoubtedly  helped  to 
form  our  tradition.  But  we  cannot  clearly  mark 
off  the  share  they  had  in  it  and  separate  what 
is  credible  from  what  is  incredible.  Nor  is  this 
necessary.  The  tradition  about  Christ  can  be  an 
invaluable  treasure  for  us,  even  if,  like  Claudius, 
we  recognize  fine  stories  and  fine  legends  in  it. 

And  not  only  in  these  particulars  I  mentioned 
has  faith  to  learn  to  take  into  account  what  his- 
torical research  can  ascertain  without  infringing 
on  strange  territory;  faith  has  to  make  even  a 
greater  concession  to  the  historical  conception 
of  Jesus:  faith,  too,  must  start  from  the  fact 
that  Jesus  was  a  real  man.  As  a  man  he  spent 
his  life  among  men;  as  a  man  he  was  regarded 
by  his  first  disciples  when  they  came  to  him;  as 
a  man  he  died.  Even  in  the  Gospel  of  John 
Jesus  is  spoken  of  as  calling  himself  plainly  a 
man :  Ye  seek  to  kill  me,  a  man  that  hath  told  you 

1  Comp.  John  2:9;   n  :  39;  20  :  27. 


128  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  truth,1  and  Paul  contrasted  the  one  man  by 
whom  sin  entered  into  the  world  with  the  one  man 
Jesus  Christ  by  whom  the  grace  of  God  did  abound 
to  many.2  And  this  concession  that  Jesus  was  a 
man  means  more  than  that  he  had  a  human 
body  and  a  human  soul,  with  which  many  people 
rest  satisfied.  To  be  a  man,  Harnack  rightly 
says,3  also  with  regard  to  Jesus,  is,  firstly,  to 
possess  such  and  such  a  definite  and,  therefore, 
limited  and  restricted  mental  disposition;  and, 
secondly,  to  be  placed  with  this  mental  disposi- 
tion in  a  likewise  limited  historical  connection. 
Every  one  who  knows  his  Bible  must  admit  that 
Jesus  was  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood  also  in  this 
sense  of  the  word.  He  not  only  spoke  the  lan- 
guage of  his  countrymen;  he  not  only  shared 
their  conception  of  the  universe;  but  he  is  also 
in  many  other  respects  influenced  by  the  culture 
of  his  world,  by  the  views  into  which  it  drew 
him. 

But,  in  spite  of  all  this,  the  assumption  that 
the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely  human  one,  and 
that  we  can  appreciate  his  personality  as  a 


8  .-40.  —  2  Romans  5  :  12  /.  —  3  Das  We  sen  des  Christen- 
turns,  ist  edition,  Leipsic,  1900,  p.  8. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  129 

purely  human  one,  is  false.  I  have  thus  reached 
the  subject  of  the  present  lecture.  I  shall  try 
to  prove  my  statement  in  a  threefold  way:  from 
the  words  of  Jesus  himself,  from  the  belief  of 
his  first  disciples,  and  from  the  belief  of  the  cen- 
turies after  him. 

If,  therefore,  I  begin  with  Jesus'  own  words, 
I  must  first  remind  you  of  something  I  said  in 
the  preceding  lecture.  All  the  words  of  Jesus 
lie  before  us,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  form  in 
which  they  were  handed  down  to  us  by  the  com- 
munity which  believed  in  him.  We  can,  there- 
fore, in  no  single  case  disprove  the  assertion  that 
the  belief  of  the  later  community  altered  the 
words  of  Jesus.  Hence,  it  is  impossible  to  prove 
by  any  single  saying  of  Jesus  that  his  own  words 
bear  evidence  that  his  life  was  not  purely  human. 
Only  the  general  impression  of  the  words  of 
Jesus  can  be  used. 

Perhaps  this  skeptical  attitude  will  surprise 
you.  Then,  permit  me  first  to  convince  you  of 
its  necessity  by  a  famous  and  particularly  in- 
structive example. 

We  should  expect  that  if  one  of  the  sayings 
of  Jesus  were  preserved  authentically  word  for 


i3o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

word,  this  would  be  the  case  with  the  words  in- 
stituting the  Lord's  supper.  For,  without  the 
slightest  doubt,  the  oldest  community  in  Jeru- 
salem already  celebrated,  as  Acts  relates,  the 
Lord's  supper.  That  the  Pauline  congregations 
did  so  is  known  quite  definitely.1  And  Paul  as- 
sumes that  this  meal  unites  all  Christians  to  one 
body.2  This  celebration  of  the  Lord's  supper, 
one  would  expect,  would  have  kept  the  words 
with  which  Jesus  instituted  this  supper  alive  in 
the  church  from  the  first  beginnings  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  addition  to  this,  we  have  a  report 
about  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  supper  not 
only  by  the  synoptic  Gospels,  but  also  by  Paul. 
And  Paul  says  distinctly:  I  received  of  the  Lord — 
certainly  not  directly,  but  by  information  from 
those  who  were  eye-witnesses  of  the  events  of 
his  last  night — that  which  also  I  delivered  unto 
you*  Then  he  declares:  The  Lord  Jesus,  ike 
night  on  which  he  was  betrayed,  took  bread,  and 
when  he  had  given  thanks,  he  brake  it  and  said: 
Take,  eat,  this  is  my  body  which  is  broken  for  you, 
this  do  in  remembrance  of  me.  In  like  manner  also 
the  cup  after  supper,  saying,  This  cup  is  the  new 

JI  Cor.  II  :  20 /. — 2I  Cor.  10  :  17. — 3I  Cor.  n  :  23. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  131 

covenant  in  my  blood;  this  do,  as  oft  as  ye  drink, 
in  remembrance  of  me.1  But  none  the  less  we  are 
not  in  a  position  to  ascertain  with  undoubted 
historical  accuracy  what  Jesus  said.  Mark, 
whom  the  first  Gospel  follows  pretty  closely, 
Luke,  and  Paul  give  us  three  reports  that  differ 
on  very  essential  points.2  In  the  text  of  Luke  we 
cannot  even  reconstruct  its  exact  wording  with 
certainty.  The  manuscripts  differ  too  much. 
Perhaps  the  text  of  Luke  originally  read  as  fol- 
lows :  And  he  said  unto  them:  With  desire  I  have 
desired  to  eat  this  Passover  with  you  before  I  suffer. 
For  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  not  any  more  eat  it,  until 
it  be  fulfilled  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  And  he  re- 
ceived a  'cup,  and  when  he  had  given  thanks,  he  said: 
Take  this  and  divide  it  among  yourselves.  For  I 
say  unto  you,  I  will  not  drink  from  henceforth  of 
the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  the  kingdom  of  God  shall 
come.  And  he  took  bread,  and  when  he  had  given 
thanks,  he  brake  it  and  gave  to  them,  saying:  This 
is  my  body.3  In  our  printed  texts  there  is  still 

ll  Cor.  II  :  24,  25. — 2Comp.  the  Preisverteilungsprogramm  der 
Universitdt  Halle  for  1894,  written  by  my  deceased  colleague  and 
friend  Erich  Haupt  (f  February  19,  1910):  Ueber  die  ursprungliche 
Form  und  Bedeutung  der  Abendmahlsworte,  Halle,  1894. — 3  Luke 
22  :  15-193. 


i3 2  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

added :*  Which  is  given  for  you ;  this  do  in  remem- 
brance of  me.  And  the  cup  in  like  manner  after 
supper,  saying:  This  cup  is  the  new  covenant  in 
my  bloody  even  that  which  is  poured  out  for  you. 
But  as  some  important  manuscripts  omit  these 
words,  which  are  almost  identical  with  those  of 
Paul,  we  cannot  absolutely  refute  the  statement 
that  these  words  are  an  addition  taken  over 
from  I  Corinthians.  It  is,  therefore,  possible  to 
reconcile  the  last  supper  of  Jesus  with  the  as- 
sumption that  his  life  was  a  purely  human  one. 
But  in  order  to  explain  this,  I  shall  have  to  in- 
troduce the  report  of  Mark  and  Matthew  also. 
It  reads:2  As  they  were  eating  he  took  bread, 
and  when  he  had  blessed,  he  brake  it  and  gave  to 
them  and  said:  Take  ye;  this  is  my  body.  And 
he  took  a  cup,  and  when  he  had  given  thanks,  he 
gave  to  them,  and  they  all  drank  of  it.  And  he  said 
unto  them:  This  is  my  blood  of  the  covenant,  which 
is  shed  for  many  (Matthew  adds :  for  the  remis- 
sion of  sins).  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  no 
more  drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  that  day 
when  I  drink  it  new  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  Here,3 

1Luke  22  :  igb,  20. — 2Mark  14:22-25;   Matt.  26:26-29. — • 
3  Mark  14  :  25  =  Matt.  26  :  29. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  133 

just  as  in  Luke,1  we  find  the  remark,  which  does 
not  agree  with  our  views  of  the  last  supper  and 
which  is  missing  in  the  report  of  Paul:  that  this 
drinking  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples  here  takes 
place  for  the  last  time,  but  that  it  will  be  re- 
peated in  the  Messianic  kingdom.  Here  the 
attempts  to  bring  the  tradition  of  the  first  Lord's 
supper  into  consonance  with  a  purely  human 
life  of  Jesus  have  a  starting-point.2  The  critics 
say  that  Mark,  Matthew,  and  the  original  text 
of  Luke  do  not  draw  any  parallel  between  the 
bread  and  the  body  of  Jesus  as  given  to  death. 
This  parallel,  they  say,  is  a  later  tradition,  like 
the  characterization  of  the  wine  as  the  blood  of 
the  new  covenant,  not  yet  found  in  Luke.  The 
new  meaning  given  to  the  words  of  Jesus  by 
these  additions  is,  in  their  opinion,  still  more  de- 
veloped by  Paul.  But  originally,  they  say,  the 
last  supper  of  Jesus  was  but  a  farewell  meal  and 
a  joyful  anticipation  of  the  fellowship  in  the 
Mes-sianic  kingdom;  and  when  Jesus  called  the 

1  Luke  22  :  16. 

2  Comp.  E.  Grafe,  Die  neuesten  Forschungen  iiber  die  urchrist- 
liche  Abendmahlsfeier  (Zeitschrlft  fur   Theologie  und  Kirche,   V, 
Tubingen,  1895,  pp.  101-138)  and  W.  Heitmuller,  Article  "Abend- 
mahl  im  Neuen  Testament,"  in  Die  Religion  usw.,  Handworterbuch 
herausgeg.  von  F.  M.  Schiele,  I,  Tubingen,  1909,  pp.  20-52. 


i34  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

bread  his  body  he  merely  referred  to  this  fel- 
lowship. 

It  can  be  shown  without  much  difficulty  that 
this  interpretation  hardly  does  justice  to  the 
sources.  In  the  synoptic  account  two  events  are 
interwoven — as  we  see  very  clearly  in  Luke,  es- 
pecially if  we  take  the  text  as  it  reads  in  most 
manuscripts —  and  these  are  the  last  Passover 
and  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  supper.  To  the 
former  belongs  the  word  about  the  repetition  or, 
as  it  is  called  in  Luke,  the  fulfilment  of  this  table 
fellowship  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  Now,  the  fact 
that  the  last  meal  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples  was 
no  Passover,  as  we  saw  in  the  preceding  lecture,1 
is  not  favorable  to  the  genuineness  of  this  word. 
But  even  if  it  is  genuine  and  in  any  way  re- 
ferred to  the  future  fellowship  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,  which  Jesus  often  likens  to  a  great  supper, 
even  then  they  are  irrelevant  for  our  conception 
of  the  Lord's  supper,  since  they  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it  but  rather  belong  to  the  preceding 
last  meal  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples.  With  re- 
gard to  the  last  supper,  purely  historical  criti- 
cism may  prove  it  to  be  probable  that  the  idea 
1  Above,  p.  107  /. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  135 

of  the  New  Covenant,  as  offered  by  Mark,  Mat- 
thew, and  Paul,  and  the  larger  but  probably 
nevertheless  genuine  text  of  Luke,  elucidates  its 
meaning.  Of  Moses  the  book  of  Exodus1  tells  us 
that,  when  the  Sinai  covenant  was  made,  he  sacri- 
ficed peace-offerings  of  oxen  unto  the  Lord,  and 
took  half  of  the  blood  and  sprinkled  it  on  the  altar; 
the  other  half  he  sprinkled  on  the  people,  saying: 
Behold  the  blood  of  the  covenant,  which  the  Lord 
has  made  with  you.  And  in  the  book  of  Jeremiah2 
is  found  the  prophecy:  Behold  the  days  come,saith 
the  Lord,  that  I  will  make  a  new  covenant,  with  the 
house  of  Israel  and  with  the  house  of  Judah,  not 
according  to  the  covenant  that  I  made  with  their 
fathers  in  the  day  that  I  took  them  by  the  hand  to 
bring  them  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt  .  .  .  ,  but  this 
shall  be  the  covenant  that  I  will  make  with  the  house 
of  Israel  after  those  days,  etc.  And,  among  the 
gifts  of  this  covenant,  the  last  and  most  decisive 
one  mentioned  is :  They  shall  all  know  me  .  .  .  , 
for  I  will  for  give  their  iniquity  and  I  will  remember 
their  sin  no  more.  These  two  passages  Jesus  evi- 
dently had  in  mind  when  in  that  night  he  thought 
of  his  death.  Metaphorically,  he  calls  it  the 

1  Exodus  24  :  5,  6,  8.— 2  Jer.  31  :  31  /. 


i36  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

sacrifice  of  the  New  Covenant;  and — even  if  the 
words  found  only  in  Matthew,  viz.,  for  the  re- 
mission of  sins,  cannot  be  accepted  as  genuine — 
nevertheless,  according  to  their  purport,  they  are 
at  home  in  the  context,  as  the  obvious  reference 
to  the  prophecy  of  Jeremiah  proves. 

It  is  very  natural  that  the  liberal  Jesus-research 
of  our  day  should  shun  this  interpretation  of 
the  Lord's  supper.  For,  if  Jesus  considered  his 
death  the  sacrifice  of  the  New  Covenant,  he  has 
thereby  assigned  to  himself  such  a  central  posi- 
tion within  the  history  of  God's  people  that  this 
is  not  compatible  with  an  ordinary  human  self- 
consciousness.  I  am  convinced  that  obscuring 
the  fact  that  Jesus  thought  so  when  he  instituted 
the  Lord's  supper  is  violating  the  sources.  But 
I  repeat,  historically  this  interpretation  cannot 
be  proved  convincingly.  Moreover,  since  the 
assumption  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  one  is  in  a  certain  manner  necessary  for 
scientific  historical  research,  as  we  saw,  no  one 
need  be  surprised  that  liberal  scholars  try  by 
all  possible  means  to  avoid  this  interpretation. 
Perhaps  we  shall  all  agree  that  it  would  be  more 
correct  for  historical  scholars  to  admit  that 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  137 

Jesus  considered  his  death  as  the  sacrifice  of  the 
New  Covenant,  and  then  to  declare  that  this 
Jesus  who  had  such  views — if  he  is  not  to 
be  taken  for  a  religious  enthusiast — cannot  be 
measured  by  any  of  the  standards  of  historical 
science.  Nevertheless,  when  considering  the 
liberal  interpretation,  we  shall  bear  in  mind,  as 
emphasized  above,  that  we  cannot  prove  by 
any  single  saying  of  Jesus  that  his  self-con- 
sciousness surpassed  human  measure. 

But  you  may  say  it  is  not  so  strange  as  it  seems 
at  first  that  the  disciples  did  not  remember  ac- 
curately the  words  Jesus  spoke  when  instituting 
the  Lord's  supper.  For  the  events  of  the  follow- 
ing night  and  the  next  day  were  exciting  enough 
to  obscure  the  recollections  of  the  previous  even- 
ing. That  is  quite  right.  Surely,  in  the  case  of 
other  sayings  of  Jesus,  e.  g.9  in  the  case  of  the  par- 
ables which  easily  impressed  themselves  on  the 
mind,  and  in  the  case  of  such  words  as  could  be 
easily  remembered  on  account  of  their  form,  tra- 
dition was  really  in  a  more  favorable  position. 
Nevertheless,  I  adhere  to  my  statement  that  we 
are  not  so  sure  of  the  exact  wording  of  any  one  of 
the  sayings  of  Jesus  that  we  could  crush  all  op- 
position with  any  single  word  ascribed  to  him. 


138  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

But  what  the  single  words  cannot  achieve, 
that  is  achieved  by  their  whole,  even  apart  from 
the  Gospel  of  John. 

Our  most  reliable  sources  for  the  words  of 
Jesus  are  the  "collection  of  sayings"  and  the 
Gospel  of  Mark  and  some  material  peculiar  to 
Luke.  I  shall  quote  from  these  sources  some 
passages  that  are  of  importance  in  this  connec- 
tion, but  for  the  present  I  shall  ignore  the  Mes- 
sianic consciousness  of  Jesus  in  order  to  discuss 
it  afterwards. 

A  self-consciousness  surpassing  human  meas- 
ure is  already  to  be  seen  in  the  words  of  Jesus 
which  are  handed  down  to  the  first  and  third 
evangelists  by  the  "collection  of  sayings."1  All 
prophets  and  the  law  prophesied  until  John,  Jesus 
says  here.2  With  him  (that  is  the  meaning)  be- 
gins a  new  period.  He  calls  his  disciples  blessed 
for  having  lived  to  see  this  time:  Blessed  are 
your  eyes,  for  they  see;  and  your  ears,  for  they 
hear.  For  verily  I  say  unto  you,  that  many  proph- 
ets and  righteous  men  desired  to  see  the  things  which 
ye  see  and  saw  them  not,  and  to  hear  the  things 

1  Comp.  A.  Harnack,  Spruche  und  Reden  Jesu.  Die  zweite 
Quelle  des  Matthaeus  und  Lukas,  Leipsic,  1907.  The  numbers  given 
in  the  following  notes  are  those  of  the  texts  printed  in  this  book, 
pp.  88-102. — 2Matt.  11:3;  Harnack,  No.  50. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  139 

which  ye  hear  and  heard  them  not.1  He  says 
outright:  Behold  a  greater  than  Jonah  is  here  and 
a  greater  than  Solomon  is  here?  He  knows  that 
through  his  activity  Capernaum  is  exalted  unto 
heaven?  He  sends  answer  to  John  the  Baptist: 
Blessed  is  he  whosoever  shall  find  none  occasion  of 
stumbling  in  me.4  Concerning  John  he  even  says 
to  the  multitudes :  This  is  he  of  whom  it  is  writ- 
ten, Behold  I  send  my  messenger  before  thy  face, 
who  shall  prepare  thy  way  before  thee.5  With  ma- 
jestic authority  he  opposes  his  I  say  unto  you 
to  the  commandments  of  the  Old  Testament.6 
He  expects  the  people  to  believe  in  him,  for  he 
is  glad  that  in  the  centurion  of  Capernaum  he 
found  so  great  a  faith  as  he  had  not  found  in 
Israel,1  and  he  knows  that  the  position  taken  up 
toward  him  is  decisive  for  all  eternity:  Whoso- 
ever shall  deny  me  before  men,  he  says,  him  will  I 
also  deny  before  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven* 
Hence  the  enormity  of  the  stupendous  demand : 
He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  me  is 

1Matt.  13  :  i6/.;  Harnack,  No.  26. — 2  Matt.  12  :  41  /.;  Har- 
nack,  No.  38. — 3Matt.  n  :  23;  Harnack,  No.  23. — 4Matt.  n  :  6; 
Harnack,  No.  14. — 6Matt.  n  :  10;  Harnack,  No.  14. — 6Matt. 
5  144;  Harnack,  No.  6;  and  Matt.  5  132;  Harnack,  No.  52. — 
7  Matt.  8  :  10;  Harnack,  No.  13. — 8Matt.  10:33;  Harnack, 
No.  343. 


i4o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

not  worthy  of  me,  and  he  that  loveth  son  or  daughter 
more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me.1 

Exactly  the  same  thoughts  are  found  in  Mark 
in  a  different  form.  Here,  too,  Jesus  knows  that 
John  the  Baptist  belongs  to  an  older  order, 
while  the  new  one  begins  with  himself:  No  man 
seweth  a  piece  of  undressed  cloth  on  an  old  gar- 
ment, nor  putteth  new  wine  into  old  wine-skins, 
Jesus  says,  when  he  is  asked  why  his  disciples 
do  not  fast  as  do  the  disciples  of  John.2  Here, 
too,  his  disciples  are  blessed  because  they  have 
him;  he  likens  them  to  the  children  of  the  bride- 
chamber  in  the  time  when  the  bridegroom  is  with 
them?  He  is  conscious  of  acting  by  an  authority 
of  which  the  Pharisees  have  no  idea.4  He  says, 
he  has  power  on  earth  to  forgive  sins.5  He  calls 
himself  metaphorically  the  stronger  man  who 
has  bound  the  strong  man,  i.  e.,  gained  the  vic- 
tory over  Satan.6  He  even  employs  the  climax: 
No  one,  not  even  the  angels  in  heaven,  neither  the 
Son.7  And  yet  he  says  that  he  did  not  come  to  be 
ministered  unto  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his 
life  a  ransom  for  many?  Here,  too,  he  demands 

aMatt.  10  :  37;  Harnack  No.  45. — 2  Mark  2  :  21. — 32  :  19. — 
4  II  :  33. — 52  :  10. — 63  :  27. — 7  13  :  32. — 8  10  145. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  141 

faith :  Thy  faith  hath  made  thee  whole,  he  says  to 
the  woman  who  had  an  issue  of  blood  twelve 
years.1  Here,  too,  he  expects  that  people  will 
make  the  greatest  sacrifices  for  his  sake,  leave 
house,  or  brethren,  or  sisters,  or  father,  or  mother, 
or  wife,  or  children,  or  lands,  even  lose  their  lives 
for  his  sake.2  Here,  too,  his  words  are  weighty 
for  eternity:  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away, 
but  my  words  shall  not  pass  away? 

From  the  tradition  peculiar  to  Luke  I  shall 
add  only  one  word,  the  word  from  the  cross 
which  testifies  how  far  Jesus  was  from  any  con- 
sciousness of  guilt:  Father,  forgive  them;  for  they 
know  not  what  they  do.4 

Are  these  sayings  still  in  harmony  with  a 
purely  human  self-consciousness? 

Here  we  have  to  revert  to  the  Messiahship  of 
Jesus.  Can  we,  as  Schweitzer  suggests,  account 
for  the  dignity  revealed  in  the  words  of  Jesus  I 
quoted  by  pointing  out  that  he  considered  him- 
self the  Messiah  ?  I  do  not  in  the  least  deny  that 
he  so  considered  himself.  As  early  as  in  the  "  col- 


*Mark  5:34. — 2 10  :  29. — 38:35. — 4Luke  23:24.  I  would 
have  quoted  also  Luke  9:35:  Ye  know  not  what  manner  of  spirit 
ye  are  of;  but  these  words  probably  are  not  genuine. 


i42  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

lection  of  sayings  "  this  is  shown  by  the  answer  he 
gave  the  disciples  of  John.1  And  in  Mark  he  did 
not  lay  claim  to  the  title  of  Messiah  for  the  first 
time  by  his  entry  into  Jerusalem;  in  the  very  be- 
ginning of  the  Gospel  Jesus  explains  his  power 
to  forgive  sins  by  pointing  out  that  he  is  the  Son 
of  many  i.  e.y  the  Messiah.2  Nor  may  this  claim 
to  the  title  of  Messiah  be  considered  as  a  some- 
what natural  tendency  to  comply  with  the  views 
of  the  time.  Messiahship  was  not  a  title  with 
which  an  earnest  man  could  trifle.  For  the 
Messiah  was,  for  the  Jews  of  that  time,  the  ful- 
filler  of  God's  final  intentions  with  the  human 
world,  the  one  toward  whom  all  prophets  had 
pointed.  By  Jesus,  too,  according  to  some  words 
of  his  in  the  "collection  of  sayings,"  even  the 
final  judgment  is  closely  connected  with  the  ul- 
timate heavenly  coming  of  the  Messiah.  We 
shall,  therefore,  not  venture  to  think  out  what 
it  means  that  Jesus  considered  himself  the  Mes- 
siah. 

Nevertheless,  in  Jesus'  own  words  Messiah- 
ship  does  not  appear  as  the  real  basis  of  his  self- 
consciousness.  For  his  Messianic  consciousness 

JMatt.  ii  :  4-11;   Harnack,  No.  14. — 2  Mark  2  :  10. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  143 

is,  in  our  oldest  source,  the  "collection  of  say- 
ings," seen  to  be  free  from  all  the  fantastic- 
majestic  traits  which  Schweitzer  ascribes  to  it. 
Our  sources  account  for  his  dignity  with  another 
fact.  A  well-known  utterance  of  Jesus  in  the 
"collection  of  sayings"  suggests  a  basis  of  his 
self-consciousness  which  certainly  is  not  opposed 
to  his  Messianic  consciousness,  but  still  is  inde- 
pendent of  it;  he  knows  that  his  relation  to 
God  as  his  father  is  unique:  All  things,  he  says,1 
have  been  delivered  unto  me  of  my  Father;  and  no 
one  knoweth  the  Son,  save  the  Father,  neither  does 
any  know  the  Father,  save  the  Son  and  he  to  whom- 
soever the  Son  will  reveal  him.  Even  if  we  could 
recognize  a  simpler  form  of  these  words  behind 
the  text  as  it  now  reads — as  Harnack  contends,2 
but  without  convincing  arguments — this  sim- 
pler form  would  still  give  evidence  that  Jesus 
was  conscious  of  a  unique  relation  to  God.  This 
very  fact  becomes  evident  also  when  in  all  the 
Gospels  Jesus  speaking  to  the  disciples  fre- 
quently calls  God  your  Father  and  my  Father,  but 
never  our  Father.  For  the  Lord's  prayer  is  not 

1Matt.  ii  :  27;   Harnack,  No.  25. — 2  A.  Harnack,  Spriiche  und 
Reden  Jesu,  Leipsic,  1907,  Excurs  I,  pp.  189-211. 


144  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

a  prayer  which  he  prayed  himself,  but  a  prayer 
which  he  taught  his  disciples.1 

These  quotations  may  suffice.  I  have  made 
no  use  here  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  because  in 
this  Gospel  the  words  of  Jesus  certainly  are 
tinged  by  the  thoughts  of  the  evangelist.  And 
also,  concerning  the  words  I  have  quoted,  I 
repeat:  we  have  no  guarantee  that  any  one 
of  them  was  spoken  by  Jesus  in  exactly  this 
form.  The  one  circumstance  that  Jesus  spoke 
Aramaic  while  his  words  are  preserved  in  Greek 
shows  clearly  that  the  words  of  Jesus  may  have 
been  modified  by  the  belief  of  his  community 
without  their  being  aware  of  the  fact.  But 
against  these  words,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  objec- 
tion that  these  words  may  have  been  altered  is  of 
no  avail.  For  we  find  them  essentially  on  the 
same  level  in  all  the  sources.  The  assumption 
that  the  faith  of  the  later  Christians  first  created 
all  these  words  or  raised  them  to  their  present 
level  by  modifying  them,  is  surely  very  difficult 
even  from  a  historical  point  of  view.  For  from 
nothing  nothing  comes.  And  only  on  the  sup- 
position that  the  Christians  had  extraordinary 

1  Comp.  Matt.  6  :  9;  Luke  n  :  i,  2. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  145 

views  about  Jesus  from  the  very  outset,  can 
historians  understand  that  even  the  oldest 
Christian  community  was  convinced  that  Jesus 
did  not  remain  among  the  dead,  but  was  raised 
by  God  and  exalted  to  the  right  hand  of  the  maj- 
esty on  high.1  Still  more  so  does  this  apply  to 
theological  observations.  But  before  we  turn  to 
these  we  must  first  take  a  glance  at  the  belief  of 
the  primitive  Christian  community. 

Where  shall  we  find  it?  Bearing  the  name 
of  an  apostle,  the  two  epistles  of  Peter,  the 
writings  of  John,  and  the  Pauline  epistles,  are 
handed  down  to  us.  The  second  epistle  of  Pe- 
ter is,  in  my  opinion,  certainly  spurious  and 
probably  the  latest  part  of  the  New  Testament. 
I  Peter  is  much  older,  but  many  people  are  of 
the  opinion  that  it  was  not  written  by  Peter, 
and  to  my  mind  this  is  at  least  not  improb- 
able. The  Johannine  writings  are  ascribed  to 
the  apostle  John  by  very  few  liberal  theo- 
logians; they  can,  therefore,  not  supply  con- 
vincing arguments.  Thus,  only  the  Pauline 
epistles  remain  as  evidences. 

But  attempts  have  been  made  to  minimize 

1  Acts  2:32  /.;  Heb.  1:3. 


146  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  importance  of  their  evidence,  too.1  We  are 
told  that  Paul  shows  his  own  individual  belief, 
not  that  of  the  oldest  Christian  community. 
These  critics  admit  that  Paul  did  not  place 
Jesus  on  a  level  with  other  men,  but  they  state 
that  this  individual  faith  of  the  apostle  had  its 
individual  causes.  Paul,  they  say,  had  no  vivid 
impression  of  the  historical  Jesus  at  all;  he  saw 
Jesus  only  in  the  glare  of  light  he  observed  on 
the  road  to  Damascus.  There  is  some  truth  in 
this  statement.  The  faith  of  Paul  has  an  indi- 
vidual tone;  his  ideas  about  Christ  cannot  be 
taken  for  common  property  of  the  apostolic  age. 
It  is  likewise  true  that  the  vision  on  the  road  to 
Damascus  was  of  decisive  importance  for  Paul's 
relation  to  Jesus.  But  this  does  not  yet  settle 
the  matter.  For,  in  the  first  place,  we  can  gather 
much  valuable  information  about  the  faith  of 
the  oldest  Christian  community  from  the  letters 


1  Comp.  C.  Holsten,  Zum  Evangelium  des  Paulus  und  Petrus, 
Rostock,  1868,  pp.  65-114  (Die  Christusvision  des  Apostels  Paulus 
und  die  Genesis  des  paulinischen  Evangeliums) ;  H.  J.  Holtzmann, 
Lehrbuch  der  Neutestamentlichen  Theologie,  Freiburg  and  Leipsic, 
1897,  II,  56-97;  W.  Wrede,  Paulus,  Halle,  1905;  A.  Julicher, 
Paulus  und  Jesus,  Tubingen,  1907;  J.  Weiss,  Paulus  und  Jfsus, 
Berlin,  1909;  P.  Feine,  Theologie  des  Neuen  Testaments,  2d  edi- 
tion, Leipsic,  1911,  p.  284  /. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  147 

of  Paul,  and,  secondly,  the  individual  thoughts 
of  the  apostle  are  not  satisfactorily  accounted 
for  by  the  vision  of  Damascus. 

Both  these  assertions  will  need  to  be  treated 
more  fully. 

Paul  frequently  came  into  contact  with  the 
Jerusalem  community.  Three  years  after  his 
conversion,  a  few  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus, 
he  visited  Peter  in  Jerusalem  and  also  spoke 
with  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus.1  At  least  three 
times  he  returned  to  Jerusalem  in  later  days,2 
so  that  he  must  have  known  very  accurately  what 
Peter,  John,  and  James  thought  about  Jesus. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  he  came  into  touch,  in 
Antioch  and  other  places,  with  Christians  who 
came  from  Palestine  or  had  intercourse  with 
Christians  there.  The  faith  of  the  whole  primi- 
tive community  cannot  have  been  unknown  to 
him.  Hence,  if  Paul  assumes  that  all  Christians 
see  in  Jesus  the  risen  Lord  exalted  to  the  right 
hand  of  God,  who  will  come  again  for  the  great 
judgment,  we  cannot  in  the  least  doubt — nor  is 

1  Gal.  i  :  18  /. 

2  A-.  Gal.  ^  :  i-io;  Acts  15  : 1-34;  b  :  Acts  18  :  21  /.;  c:  Acts  21  : 
17-27.     The  journey  reported  in  Acts  1 1  130,  as  not  being  men- 
tioned by  Saint  Paul  himself  (Gal.  I  and  2),  must  be  disputed. 


i48  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

it  doubted — that  this  assumption  was  correct. 
History,  indeed,  does  not  know  of  any  commu- 
nity in  those  primitive  times  that  saw  in  Jesus 
merely  the  teacher  and  the  exemplar  of  Christian 
faith.  To  the  earliest  Christians,  too,  Jesus  was 
an  object  of  their  belief.  Paul  also  assumed  that 
all  Christians  prayed  to  Christ.  He  character- 
izes the  Christians  as  people  who  call  upon  the 
name  of  Jesus  Christ.1  The  correctness  of  this 
assumption  cannot  be  proved  inductively  by 
the  few  other  passages  of  the  New  Testament 
that  also  mention  prayer  to  Christ.2  But  so 
much  is  certain,  that  in  Paul's  sphere  of  obser- 
vation— and  Jerusalem  belonged  to  this  sphere 
— he  met  prayer  to  Christ  so  often  that  he  could 
look  upon  it  as  common  to  all  Christians. 

Now  the  experiences  of  Paul  go  back,  as  was 
said,  to  the  earliest  times  after  Jesus'  death. 
Two  or  three  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus,  and 
perhaps  at  a  still  earlier  date,3  Paul  was  won 

al  Cor.  i  :  2;  comp.  Rom.  10  :  3;  Phil.  2  :  10,  n;  II  Cor.  12  : 
8,  9.— *  Acts  7  :  58;  9  :  14,  21;  22  :  16;  Rev.  5  :  13;  22  :  17,  20; 
John  14:13  /.;  comp.  5:23. —  3That  is  Harnack's  opinion. 
In  his  Chronologie,  I,  237,  he  placed  the  conversion  of  Saint 
Paul  "in  the  year  of  Jesus'  death  or  in  the  following"  (i.  e,,  30 
A.  D.);  now  (Chronologische  Berechnung  des  Tags  von  Damas- 
kus;  Silzungsberichte  der  Berliner  Akademie,  1912,  pp.  673-682) 
he  dares  to  give  an  accurate  date:  autumn  31  A.  D. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  149 

over  to  Christianity.  What  Paul  could  look 
upon  as  general  Christian  conviction  must  reach 
back  as  far  as  this  time.  Moreover,  it  must 
be  just  as  old  as  the  belief  of  the  first  disciples 
in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  For  the  following 
two  or  three  years  of  the  Jerusalem  community 
could  only  have  made  it  more  difficult  to  believe 
in  the  exalted  Lord,  or,  if  this  belief  already 
existed,  they  could  at  most  have  developed 
it  further  in  spite  of  all  difficulties;  certainly 
they  could  never  have  produced  it.  But  how 
is  the  faith  of  the  primitive  Christian  commu- 
nity to  be  accounted  for  if  the  life  of  Jesus 
was  only  a  purely  human  one?  Even  from  a 
merely  historical  point  of  view  this  is  a  weighty 
argument  against  the  results  or,  better,  pre- 
suppositions of  liberal  Jesus-research;  and  still 
more  so,  as  we  shall  see,  from  the  theological 
point  of  view. 

Two  other  points,  too,  are  to  be  noticed  with 
regard  to  what  we  hear  about  the  faith  of  the 
oldest  Christian  community  from  the  letters  of 
Paul. 

First,  Paul  expressly  says  in  I  Corinthians: 
I  delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that  which  also  I 


1 50  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

received,  how  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins.1  Paul 
then  is  made  a  bearer  of  false  testimony  when 
people  speak  as  if  the  belief  that  Christ's  death 
is  important  for  the  forgiveness  of  sins  was  an 
idea  peculiar  to  Paul.  This  belief,  too,  must 
date  from  the  earliest  times. 

Secondly,  we  must  remember  that  the  older 
apostles  at  Jerusalem  could  not  have  remained 
ignorant  of  Paul's  views  about  Jesus  in  their 
frequent  intercourse  with  him.  But  we  do  not 
find  the  least  hint  that  these  Pauline  views  ever 
became  an  object  of  opposition  or  dispute.2 
From  this  it  follows  that  the  views  of  the  older 
apostles  about  Christ,  as  far  as  faith,  not  the- 
ology, was  concerned,  stood  on  the  same  level 
as  those  of  Paul. 

This  is  sufficient  to  justify  the  inference  that 
Paul's  individual  views  about  Jesus,  to  which  we 
now  turn  our  attention,  cannot  be  derived  from 
his  Damascus  experience  and  from  the  thoughts 
about  the  Messiah  which  he  brought  with  him  as 
a  Jewish  theologian.  Both  certainly  exerted  their 
influence.  The  fact  that  we  hear  from  Paul  more 


*I  Cor.  15  :  3. — 2Comp.  even  C.  Weizsacker,  Das  apostolische 
Zeitalter  der  christlichen  Kirche,  Freiburg,  1886,  p.  no. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  151 

about  the  exalted  Lord  than  about  the  historical 
Jesus  is  connected  with  the  former.  And  the 
latter  we  can  bring  into  line  with  the  Pauline 
views  about  the  pre-existence  of  Christ.  But 
the  decisive  question  is  not  whether  the  vision 
of  Damascus  and  the  Jewish  theological  tradi- 
tion had  a  share  in  forming  Paul's  views  about 
Jesus.  The  question  is  rather  this,  whether 
these  two  factors  alone  can  sufficiently  explain 
the  fact,  that  Paul,  as  all  will  admit,  did  not 
consider  the  life  of  Jesus  a  purely  human  one. 

In  discussing  this  question  we  need  not  be 
satisfied  with  the  argument  advanced  before, 
viz.,  that  the  older  apostles  did  not  find  anything 
strange  in  Paul's  Christological  views.  From 
the  epistles  of  Paul  themselves  we  can  show 
that  Paul's  religious  appreciation  of  Jesus 
had  stronger  and  deeper  roots  than  the  glare  of 
light  which,  according  to  Acts,1  he  saw  before 
Damascus  and  the  traditions  of  a  Messianic 
theology  which  he  possessed  while  still  a  Jew. 
We  shall  have  to  pay  attention  to  four  points  in 
this  respect. 

Firstly,  it  is  nothing  but  a  fable  convenue  of 

9:3;   22  :  6;  26:  13. 


152  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

former  liberal  theology  that  Paul  knew  next  to 
nothing  about  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  or  that 
he  did  not  even  care  to  know  anything  about  it. 
It  is  true  we  cannot  make  out  whether  Paul  saw 
Jesus  personally  while  he  was  still  a  Jew.  But 
I  think  it  likely  all  the  same.  For  we  have  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  Paul,  who  received  his 
rabbinical  education  in  Jerusalem1  and  dwelt 
there  when  Stephen  died,2  was  absent  from  Jeru- 
salem just  at  the  times  when  Jesus  visited  the 
holy  city;  and  Paul's  utterance,  though  we  have 
known  Christ  after  the  fleshy  yet  now  we  know  him 
so  no  more?  becomes  more  intelligible  if  he  in- 
cludes himself  in  the  number  of  those  who  once 
knew  Christ  after  the  flesh.  But  this  question  is 
of  minor  importance.  Weighty,  however,  is  the 
fact  that  Paul  is  very  far  from  betraying  merely 
a  superficial  acquaintance  with  the  earthly  life 
of  Jesus.  He  mentions  his  birth,4  his  being  be- 
trayed,5 the  institution  of  the  Lord's  supper  in 
the  night  before  his  passion,6  his  death  on  the 
cross,7  his  resurrection,8  and  the  appearances  of 
the  risen  Lord.9  He  sums  up  his  whole  life  in 

xActs  22  :  13. — 2  Acts  7  :  57. — 3 II  Cor.  5  :  16. — 4Gal.  4  :  4. — 
6 1  Cor.  11:23. — 6I  Cor.  11:23-25. — 7Comp.  I  Cor.  2:2. — 
8 1  Cor.  15  :  4. — 9 1  Cor.  15  :  5-8. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  153 

the  few  suggestive  words,  He  humbled  himself 
and  became  obedient  unto  death.1  And  though 
he  seldom  refers  to  sayings  of  Christ,  yet  words 
of  Jesus  are  echoed  by  many  passages  of  Paul,2 
as  Weinel,  too,  now  admits.3  Moreover,  Paul 
did  not  write  Gospels,  but  occasional  letters  to 
his  congregations.  The  letters  cannot  show  all 
that  Paul  knew  of  Jesus;  we  cannot  expect  to 
learn  from  them  how  much  Paul  told  of  Jesus 
in  his  missionary  sermons.  Harnack  pointed 
out  very  aptly,  a  short  while  ago,  that  one  might 
feel  inclined  to  judge  from  the  Acts  that  its 
author  knew  really  nothing  else  about  the  life  of 
Christ  than  what  he  had  gleaned  from  Chris- 
tological  dogmatics — and  yet  the  same  author 
wrote  the  third  Gospel.  Paul,  too — Harnack 
himself  calls  attention  to  this  parallel4 — evi- 
dently knew  far  more  about  Jesus,  and  related 
more  in  his  missionary  sermons,  than  he  had  oc- 
casion to  reveal  in  his  letters. 

Secondly,  I  think  it  is  just  as  big  a  mistake  not 
to  recognize  that  Paul's  faith  was,  to  a  large  ex- 

1  Phil.  2  :  8. — 2  Comp.  P.  Feine,  Jesus  Christus  und  Paulus, 
Leipsic,  1902. — 3H.  Weinel,  1st  das  "liberate"  Jesusbild  wider- 
legt?  Tubingen,  1910,  p.  16. — 4  A.  Harnack,  Neue  Untersuchungen 
zur  Apostelgeschichte  und  zur  Abfassungszeit  der  synoptischen 
Evangelien,  Leipsic,  1911,  p.  81 /. 


154  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

tent,  dependent  on  the  historical  Jesus  even  apart 
from  his  death  on  the  cross.  Twice  Paul  calls 
Jesus  the  image  of  God,1  and  once  he  expressly 
adds:  of  the  invisible  God.2  As  early  as  in  the 
fourth  century  Marcellus  of  Ancyra  remarked 
correctly  that  Paul  could  not  have  conceived 
the  image  of  the  invisible  God  as  invisible  in 
itself.3  Paul,  therefore,  calling  Christ  the  image 
of  God,  cannot  refer  to  the  pre-existent  Christ, 
but  only  to  the  historical  and  now  exalted  Lord. 
Similarly  Paul  can  only  mean  the  historical  and 
then  exalted  Jesus,  when  in  the  same  passage 
in  which  he  mentions  the  image  of  God  he  says 
that  we  see  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus 
Christ.*  The  historical  Jesus  is  to  him  just  as 
well  as  to  John5  an  appearance  full  of  grace  and 
truth. 

And  why  was  this  the  case  ?  This  brings  us  to 
the  third  point  I  wish  to  speak  about.  Why  did 
Paul  see  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  ? 
Only  superficial  interpretation,  I  think,  may  rest 
satisfied  with  seeing  the  explanation  in  the  vi- 
sion of  light  on  the  road  to  Damascus.  The- 

*II  Cor.  4  :  4;  Col.  I  :  15. — 2  Col.  I  :  15. — 3  Fragment  No.  93 
in  Eusebius,  Werke,  vol.  IV,  ed.  E.  Klostermann,  Leipsic,  1906, 
p.  205. — 4II  Cor.  4  :  6. — B  John  I  :  14. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  155 

ological  discernment,  in  my  opinion,  suggests  a 
different  interpretation.  We  find  it  in  II  Corin- 
thians 5  : 19:  God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the 
world  unto  himself.  For  the  grace  of  God  is  the 
central  thought  in  Paul.  And  this  is  the  rock 
on  which  he  stands,  that  we  by  believing  in 
Christ  have  access  to  this  grace  of  God.1  There- 
fore he  says  that  nothing  shall  be  able  to  separate 
us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus 
our  Lord? 

And  this  leads  us  up  to  the  fourth  and  last 
point,  viz.,  on  what  ground  this  knowledge  of  the 
love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  was  based.  On 
theories  which  Paul  had  built  up  ?  or  on  ideas 
of  a  Saviour-God  which  in  those  times  cropped 
up  here  and  there  and,  which  Paul  transferred 
to  Jesus  ?  Such  a  statement  would  be  as  foolish 
as  if  we  were  to  say  that  a  bridegroom's  expres- 
sions of  gratitude  and  happiness  were  but  the 
echo  of  the  many  love-songs  in  the  world's  lit- 
erature, of  which  he  could  not  have  been  ig- 
norant. Every  one  who  knows  what  inner  life 
is,  hears  a  different  answer  out  of  the  words  of 
Paul :  That  life  which  I  now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live 

1Comp.  Rom.  5  :  2. — *  Rom.  8  :  35-39. 


1 56  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

in  faith,  the  faith  which  is  in  the  Son  of  God,  who 
loved  me  and  gave  himself  up  for  me.1  The  inner- 
most experiences  of  the  apostle  are  behind  these 
words,  experiences  that  have  to  be  appreciated 
theologically. 

This  is  the  case  also  with  the  writings  of  John. 
But  I  shall  mention  only  one  circumstance  which 
will  go  to  prove  that  here,  too,  not  a  theory,  but 
most  grateful  inward  dependence  on  Jesus,  was 
the  basis  on  which  John's  high  appreciation  of 
Jesus  was  ultimately  founded.  Seven  times  in 
the  first  epistle  of  John  we  find  the  Greek  pro- 
noun e/cetz/09,  "that  one";2  six  times3  it  is  Jesus 
who  is  thus  characterized.  The  English  trans- 
lation simply  reads:  He,  e.  g.,  every  one  that  hath 
this  hope  set  on  him,  purifieth  himself,  even  as  he  is 
pure.4  In  the  same  manner,  this  pronoun  is 
used  by  the  Gospel  of  John  in  a  well-known  pas- 
sage: He  that  hath  seen  (viz.,  John  the  apostle) 
hath  borne  witness,  and  his  witness  is  true,  and  he 
(viz.,  Jesus)  knoweth  that  he  (John)  saith  true.5 

lGs.l  2  :  20.— 2 1  John  2:6;  3:3;  3:5;  3:7;   3  :  16;  4  :  17; 

5  :  16. — 3 1  John  5  :  16  only  is  to  be  excepted. — 4  I  John  3:3. — 

6  John  19  :  35.    I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  interpre- 
tation of  this  passage  accepted  above  is  the  right  one.     It  was 
proposed    by   Theodor  Zahn   (Zeitschrift  fur  kirchliche   Wissen- 
schaft,  1888,  p.  594;  comp.  his  Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  157 

Speaking  only  of  "him,"  the  writer  knew  that 
his  readers  would  understand  who  was  meant. 
All  his  thoughts  were  full  of  thanks  and  love  to- 
ward him;  speaking  of  him  he  could  not  mean 
any  one  else.  As  Zinzendorf,  consoling  a  mother 
whose  two  sons  had  died  in  missionary  work  in 
West  India,  said  only:  He  is  worthy  of  all  this. 
Where  we  meet  such  inward  indebtedness  of 
love  to  Jesus,  it  is  foolish  to  explain  the  high 
titles  which  the  Johannine  writings  heap  on 
Jesus  as  borrowed  from  other  religious  move- 
ments or  as  gradually  exaggerated  out  of  the 
faith  of  the  community.  John  is  backed  by  his 
personal  experience,  when  in  his  first  epistle  he 
says  of  Christ:  This  is  the  true  God  and  eternal 
life.1 

Permit  me,  finally,  to  support  these  argu- 
ments by  referring  in  a  few  words  to  the  faith 
of  the  centuries  after.  Not  more  than  eighty  to 
ninety  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus  we  find 
in  a  man  who  could  not  have  known  Jesus  per- 
sonally, viz.  Ignatius  of  Antioch,  of  whom  we 

II,  1900,  p.  483  /.,  not.  16);  but  has  not  yet  found  the  attention 
which  it  deserves  (comp.  H.  Dechent,  Zur  Auslegung  der  Stelle 
Joh.  19  :  35,  in  Theologische  Studien  und  Kritiken,  72,  1899,  pp. 
446-467). — 1 1  John  5  :  20. 


i$8  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

possess  seven  letters,  such  a  faith  in  Jesus  Christ, 
such  a  thankful  love  of  Jesus,  that  religious  his- 
tory is  forced  to  admit:  this  is  a  singular  phe- 
nomenon compared  with  all  we  can  observe  in 
the  non-christian  sphere.  But  it  is  no  singular 
phenomenon  in  the  Christian  development  which 
followed.  Again  and  again  in  the  history  of 
Christianity,  faith  and  charity  have  been  great- 
est where  living  and  grateful  belief  in  Jesus  have 
been  found  in  the  church.  Augustine,  Bernard  of 
Clairvaux,  Francis  of  Assisi,  Paul  Gerhardt,  the 
Wesleys,  Charles  Kingsley,  and  many  others  are 
examples  of  this  fact.  And  up  to  the  present 
time  thousands  of  Christian  hearts  re-echo  the 
words : 

Jesus,  our  only  joy  be  thou, 

As  thou  our  prize  wilt  be, 
Jesus,  be  thou  our  glory  now 

And  through  eternity. 

Is  all  this  but  a  dead  echo  of  what  Paul  and 
John  once  said?  Nobody  who  knows  living 
Christian  faith  will  say  so.  But  a  friend  of  mine 
once  objected:  similar  thoughts  are  also  found 
in  the  veneration  of  Mary  by  the  Catholic 
church.  And  we  must  admit  that  here,  too, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  159 

there  is  personal  experience  at  the  back  of  it. 
Certainly.  But  the  Catholic  faith  in  Mary  is 
only  a  duplicate  of  the  faith  in  Christ.  It  would 
not  have  come  into  existence  had  not  the  faith 
in  Christ  existed  before.  The  faith  in  Christ 
is  unique  in  the  history  of  religion  on  account 
of  its  intimate  character,  its  clear  motivation, 
and  its  power  over  sin,  hardships,  and  death. 

And  this  faith  can  experience  for  itself  what 
Paul  and  John  experienced  in  their  belief.  It 
feels  that  the  faith  of  these  apostles,  in  spite  of 
all  differences  due  to  their  different  surroundings, 
was  essentially  the  same  as  the  faith  in  Christ 
of  our  time.  And,  besides,  this  faith  finds  a  sup- 
port and  a  foundation  in  those  very  words  of 
Jesus  we  spoke  of  in  the  first  part  of  this  lecture. 
It  is  not  historical  reasoning;  it  is  theological, 
religious  reasoning,  if  we  now  say :  here  the  one 
supports  the  other.  But  we  do  not  need  to 
creep  into  a  corner  with  such  reasoning  before 
the  science  of  our  time.  Science  has  to  respect 
realities.  And  it  is  a  reality  that  the  faith  in 
Jesus  the  Saviour  has  been  a  power  in  history, 
and  still  is  a  power  in  the  world  up  to  the  present 
day.  Historical  science  cannot  do  justice  to  the 


160  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

sources  with  its  assumption  that  the  life  of 
Jesus  was  a  purely  human  life.  It  cannot  draw 
a  credible  picture  of  Jesus.  But  the  faith  of  all 
times  carries  a  picture  of  Jesus  in  its  heart  which 
has  its  prototype  in  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels 
and  in  his  own  self-consciousness.  Every  one 
who  knows  this  faith  from  his  own  experience, 
who  can  appreciate  and  join  in  feeling,  however 
imperfectly,  what  Paul  said:  That  life  which  I 
now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live  in  faith,  the  faith 
which  is  in  the  Son  of  God,  who  loved  me  and  gave 
himself  up  for  me,1  will  be  firmly  convinced  that 
historical  science  can  as  little  conceive  Jesus 
correctly  as  natural  science  can  appreciate  God 
correctly.  Its  method  cannot  reach  up  to  him. 
The  presupposition,  without  which  historical 
science  cannot  undertake  to  describe  the  life  of 
Jesus,  the  presupposition  that  this  life  was  a 
purely  human  life  which  did  not  go  beyond  the 
analogy  of  our  human  experience,  cannot  do 
justice  to  the  life  of  Jesus  and  to  his  person.  This 
presupposition  is  false. 

But  what  then  is  the  correct  opinion  about 
Jesus?    Is  the  old  Christological  tradition  of  the 

1  Gal.  2  :  20. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  161 

church  the  true  one,  in  spite  of  the  scornful 
manner  in  which  it  is  often  treated  by  modern 
science?  Or  have  we  to  look  for  new  roads  to- 
ward an  appreciation  of  Jesus? 

These  questions  will  be  dealt  with  in  my  last 
two  lectures. 


V 


THE  ANCIENT  CHRISTOLOGY 
UNTENABLE 

PERMIT  me  to  start  from  William  Benjamin 
Smith  once  more.  He  is  in  the  wrong  with 
his  assumption  of  a  purely  divine  Jesus,  who 
never  lived  the  life  of  a  human  being.  But  he 
is  right  in  saying  that  liberal  Jesus-research, 
which  acknowledges  only  a  purely  human  life 
of  Jesus,  has  not  succeeded  in  sketching  a  pict- 
ure of  Jesus  which  does  justice  to  the  sources 
and  is  credible  as  it  stands.  He  is  also  right, 
as  we  saw,  in  the  last  place,  in  opposing  the  as- 
sumption itself  that  the  life  of  Jesus  must  have 
been  a  purely  human  one.  Now,  for  Smith,  it 
seems,  there  is  no  other  choice  besides  these  two. 
The  orthodox  church  doctrine  about  Jesus  is  not 
considered  by  him  worth  any  serious  discussion. 
He  does  not  deny  that  it  is  respectable  and  ven- 
erable in  its  kind,  and  to  a  certain  extent  even 
logical  and  consistent.  But  still  it  is  not  worth 

his  while  to  spend  any  time  over  it.    May  it  be 

162 


WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH?  163 

right  or  wrong,  good  or  bad,  he  says,  the  human 
mind  has,  at  last,  and  once  for  all,  gone  beyond  it, 
and  it  is  sheer  madness  to  suppose  that  the  human 
mind  could  ever  turn  back  on  the  road  it  has  once 
set  its  foot  on.  It  could  not  do  so  even  if  it  would. 
Reason,  in  this  and  the  following  centuries,  he 
says,  can  believe  just  as  little  in  the  God-man  as 
in  the  geocentric  theory  of  the  Ptolemaic  system}- 

What  is  the  truth  about  this  assertion,  which 
is  far  from  being  defended  only  by  W.  B.  Smith  ? 
— to  this  question  we  were  brought  at  the  end 
of  the  preceding  lecture.  Is  the  old  church 
doctrine  about  Christ  able  to  give  us  the  right 
conception  of  Jesus,  or  is  it  to  be  set  aside  as  an- 
tiquated without  the  least  attempt  to  vindicate 
it? 

If  we  turn  our  attention  to  this  question,  we 
shall  first  have  to  take  into  consideration  the 
orthodox  doctrine  itself.  For  inaccurate  opinions 
about  it,  and  very  general  and  superficial  con- 
ceptions of  it,  such  as  are  wide-spread  in  Chris- 
tendom, make  earnest  discussion  of  the  prob- 
lems of  Christology  practically  impossible. 

Christ  is,  in  the  New  Testament,  often  called 

1  W.  B.  Smith,  Ecce  Deus,  p.  6. 


1  64  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  Son  of  God,  and  the  so-called  symbol  of  the 
apostles,  following  the  Gospel  of  John,1  calls  him 
the  only  begotten  Son  of  God.  How  is  this  under- 
stood in  the  orthodox  tradition  of  the  Christian 
churches?  In  two  respects,  according  to  the 
orthodox  doctrine,  Christ  is  the  Son  or  the  only 
begotten  Son  of  God.2  He  is  this,  in  so  far  as  he 
was  man,  because  the  miraculous  overshadowing 
of  the  Virgin  Mary  by  the  Holy  Ghost  had  formed 
without  the  ordinary  course  of  nature  the  first 
beginnings  of  his  human  body  in  the  womb  of  his 
mother.3  He  is  this,  secondly  —  and  this  sense  is 
the  more  important  one  to  the  orthodox  tra- 
dition —  as  the  Word  of  God,  as  Saint  John  says,4 
because  he  is  begotten  of  the  Father  from  all 
eternity.  Begotten  here  surely  is  a  metaphorical 
expression;  its  meaning  is  that  the  Son  is  not  a 
creature  of  God,  but  educed  from  the  substance 
of  the  Father.  And  this  begetting  was  from  all 
eternity.  Just  as  no  light  is  ever  without  lustre, 
so  the  Father  is  never  without  the  Son.  Nor  was 
he  ever  without  the  Holy  Ghost,  who,  eternally 


1:14,  18;  3:16.  —  2Comp.,  e.  g.,  Gilbert,  Bishop  of 
Sarum,  An  Exposition  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  the  Church  of 
England,  revised  and  corrected  by  J.  R.  Page,  London,  1839,  p.  51. 
—"Gilbert,  1.  c—  4John  I  :  I. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  165 

proceeding  from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  is  also 
educed  from  the  same  substance.  But  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  not  said  to  be  begotten.  And,  though 
we  cannot  assign  a  reason  why  the  emanation 
of  the  Son  and  not  that  of  the  Holy  Ghost  like- 
wise is  called  a  begetting,  nor  understand  what 
begetting  strictly  signifies  here,  yet  begotten  is 
the  right  word  for  signifying  the  eternal  relation 
between  the  Father  and  the  Son.1 

This  eternal  Son  of  God,  of  course,  is  another 
than  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost.  But  these 
three  persons,  or  hypostases,  as  they  are  called, 
are  of  one  substance,  of  one  power,  of  one  eter- 
nity; and  the  diversity  of  "persons,"  therefore, 
does  not  dissolve  the  unity  of  the  Godhead. 
The  Trinity,  or  better:  Tri-unity,  is  the  one  God, 
of  whom  it  is  said :  Hear,  0  Israel,  the  Lord  our 
God  is  one  Lord.2 

Nevertheless — so  the  orthodox  doctrine  af- 
firms— only  the  second  person  of  the  holy  Trin- 
ity became  incarnate,  taking  man's  nature  upon 
himself  in  the  womb  of  the  Virgin  Mary  and  of 
her  substance.  Two  natures  therefore  were, 
and  since  that  time  are,  joined  together  in  the 

1  Comp.  Gilbert,  1.  c.,  p.  52. — *  Deut.  6  :  4. 


1 66  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

one  person  of  Christ,  the  divine  and  the  human 
one.  Two  natures,  I  say,  not  two  individuals. 
For  it  is  not  a  human  personality  that  the  Son 
of  God  assumed.  He  assumed  human  nature  as 
a  potential  human  individual.  And  he  himself, 
the  one  Son  of  God,  became  the  formative  and 
controlling  agency  of  the  two  natures,  the  hu- 
man nature  coming  to  individual  existence  in 
the  personality  of  the  incarnate  Son  of  God. 
The  human  nature,  however,  is  not  altered,  nor 
is  the  divine;  the  two  natures  are  united  in 
the  one  person  unconfusedly,  unchangeably,  indi- 
visibly,  inseparably,  the  properties  of  each  nat- 
ure being  preserved  in  the  union.1  The  two  nat- 
ures, as  has  often  been  said  since  olden  time,  form 
a  unity  like  that  of  body  and  soul  in  man.  And 
yet,  in  a  modern  exposition  of  the  thirty-nine 
articles  of  the  Anglican  church,2  this  compari- 
son is  expounded  in  the  following  way:  In  man 
there  is  a  material  and  a  spiritual  nature  joined 
together.  They  are  two  natures  as  different  as  any 
we  can  apprehend  among  all  created  beings;  yet 
these  make  but  one  man.  The  matter  which  the  body 

1So  it  is  defined  at  the  council  of  Chalcedon,  451  A.  D. — 2  Gil- 
bert, 1.  c.,  p.  62. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  167 

is  composed  of  does  not  subsist  by  itself,  is  not  gov- 
erned by  all  those  laws  of  motion  to  which  it  would 
be  subjected  if  it  were  inanimate  matter,  but  by  the 
indwelling  and  agency  of  the  soul  it  has  another 
spring  within  it  and  has  another  course  of  opera- 
tions. Now,  as  the  body  is  still  a  body,  and  oper- 
ates as  a  body,  though  it  subsists  by  the  indwelling 
and  agency  of  the  soul,  so  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ  the  human  nature  was  entire,  and  still  acted 
according  to  its  own  character;  yet  there  was  such 
a  union  and  inhabitation  of  the  eternal  word  in  it 
that  there  did  arise  out  of  that  a  communion  of 
names  and  characters  as  we  find  in  the  scriptures. 
Nevertheless,  of  course,  the  church  orthodoxy  of 
all  times  continued  to  hold  that  the  divine  Word 
of  God,  though  being  the  acting  subject  in  the 
life  of  Christ,  properly  speaking  did  not  suffer 
or  die,  but  only,  in  virtue  of  the  personal  union 
with  the  human  nature,  took  part  in  the  passions 
of  his  human  soul  and  body. 

This  will  have  to  suffice,  although  it  is  but  a 
very  short  survey  of  the  orthodox  doctrine.  I 
am  sorry  that  it  does  not  show  what  deep 
thoughts  are  woven  into  this  doctrine  and  with 
what  ingenuity  all  the  details  were  thought 


i68  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

out.  I  shall,  therefore,  illustrate  the  great 
amount  of  mental  labor  which  was  devoted 
to  this  doctrine  by  one  testimony  which  will 
certainly  not  be  suspected.  Lessing  surely  in- 
cluded the  orthodox  Christology  when  once  he 
declared  about  the  orthodox  system  that  he 
knew  nothing  in  the  world  in  which  human 
ingenuity  showed  and  exercised  itself  in  a  greater 
manner.1 

Notwithstanding,  I  wish  at  the  outset  to  state 
quite  openly  that  I  cannot  hold  this  old  Chris- 
tology, this  old  orthodox  answer  to  the  question, 
Who  was  Christ?  And  for  three  reasons.  First, 
because  to  rational  logic  the  old  Christology 
appears  untenable;  secondly,  because  it  does 
not  agree  with  the  New  Testament  views;  and, 
thirdly,  because  we  can  show  that  it  was  in- 
fluenced by  antiquated  conceptions  of  Greek 
philosophy.  These  three  points  of  view  will 
have  to  determine  the  order  of  treatment  in  the 
present  lecture. 

Rational  arguments  had  a  bad  reputation  in 
the  domain  of  religion  up  to  the  time  of  the  so- 

1  Letter  to  his  brother  Charles,  2d  Feb.,  1774,  Les sings  Werke, 
Hem-pelsche  Ausgabe,  20,  I,  572. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  169 

called  Enlightenment.  And  the  Enlightenment, 
which,  in  religion  too,  was  prepared  to  recognize 
only  what  reason  accepted  as  correct,  has  not 
held  its  own.  It  is  generally  admitted  now  that 
it  expected  too  much  from  reason.  The  religious 
thoughts  which  it  presumed  to  retain  in  the 
name  of  reason — the  belief  in  God,  the  convic- 
tion of  the  freedom  of  man  and  the  necessity 
of  a  moral  life,  and  the  belief  in  the  immortality 
of  the  soul — these  thoughts  are  to-day  regarded 
as  rational  ideas  by  but  a  few  scientifically 
trained  men.  And  I  believe  this  modern  posi- 
tion can  be  better  defended  than  that  of  the  En- 
lightenment. Our  reason  cannot  make  any  defi- 
nite assertion  about  supersensual  things.  Even 
the  freedom  of  will  is,  to  say  the  least,  a  prob- 
lem it  cannot  solve.  But,  if  our  reason  cannot 
make  any  definite  statements  about  supersen- 
sual things,  it  is  in  reality  but  a  poor  critic  of 
religious  doctrines.  That  I  grant  absolutely. 
Faith  has  to  do  with  supersensual  things;  no 
reason,  no  science,  can  reach  up  to  its  objects. 
Hence,  I  adduce  no  rational  arguments  against 
the  church  doctrine  of  the  holy  Trinity  itself.  It 
is  beyond  all  doubt,  I  grant,  that  this  doctrine 


1 70  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

gives  grave  offence  to  reason.  But  it  would  be 
wrong  to  reject  the  doctrine  on  this  account.  It 
is  absolutely  impossible  for  our  reason  to  com- 
prehend God;  his  eternity,  his  creation  and 
maintenance  of  all  things,  his  omnipotence  and 
omniscience  are  absolutely  incomprehensible  for 
us.  I  can,  therefore,  very  well  understand  that 
people  keep  on  saying:  We  must  silence  all  ob- 
jections against  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  Trin- 
ity, considering  that  the  fact  of  our  not  under- 
standing it  as  it  is  in  itself  makes  the  difficulties 
appear  much  greater  than  they  otherwise  would 
seem,  if  we,  while  in  this  earthly  life,  had  suffi- 
cient light  about  it  or  were  capable  of  forming  a 
more  perfect  idea  about  it.1  People  have  even 
tried,  with  some  appearance  of  success,  to  make 
the  idea  that  the  holy  Trinity  is  the  one  God 
more  acceptable  to  our  minds.  And  this  did 
not  happen  for  the  first  time  in  the  days  when — 
seventy  to  eighty  years  ago — the  philosophy  of 
Hegel  reigned.  Augustine  had  already  tried  to 
make  the  oneness  of  the  triune  God  intelligible 
by  analyzing  human  self-consciousness.  He  said 
that,  just  as  in  our  spiritual  being  there  can  be 

1  Gilbert,  1.  c.,  p.  44. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  171 

distinguished  memory,  and  understanding,  which 
conceives  all  that  is  in  our  memory,  and  will, 
which  connects  our  understanding  with  the 
contents  of  our  memory,  so  also  in  God  we 
may  distinguish  the  Father,  and  the  Son  his 
intellect,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  uniting  both  in 
love.1 

But  none  the  less  we  cannot  and  ought  not 
to  exclude  reason  completely  from  religious 
thoughts.  Even  if  we  claim  that  reason  should 
recognize  religious  truths  that  lie  beyond  its 
sphere,  no  one  could  expect  it  to  approve  such 
thoughts  as  hopelessly  contradict  themselves. 
But  the  orthodox  Christology  can  be  convicted 
of  three  such  contradictions. 

The  first  one  Augustine  already  experienced2 
as  a  disturbing  element,  and  the  scholastic  the- 
ology of  the  Middle  Ages  tried  in  vain  to  get 
rid  of  it.3  If,  as  Augustine  thinks — and  this 
has  been  the  orthodox  opinion  since — the  dis- 
tinction of  persons  in  the  Trinity  is  limited  to 

1  Comp.  A.  Dorner,  Augustinus,  Berlin,  1873,  pp.  8-16. 

2  Comp.  O.   Scheel,  Die    Anschauung    Augustins    uber    Christi 
Person  und  Werk,  Tubingen,  1901,  p.  47 /. 

3  Comp.  F.  Loofs,  Dogmengeschichte,  4th  edition,  Halle,   1906, 
p.  500,  not.  4;  Thomas  Aquinas,  Summa  theol.,  III,  3,  4. 


i72  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

their  internal  relation  to  each  other  within  the 
triune  God,  how  was  it  possible  that  only  the 
second  person  was  incarnated?  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  if  the  incarnation  of  the  second  per- 
son only  is  certain,  how  can  the  oneness  of  the 
triune  God,  i.  e.,  how  can  Christian  monotheism 
be  retained  ?  This  unsolvable  dilemma,  perhaps, 
may  be  escaped  and  the  incarnation  of  the  Son 
only  be  retained,  without  endangering  monothe- 
ism, by  emphasizing  that  the  Father  and  the 
Holy  Ghost  were  not  separated  from  the  in- 
carnated Son. 

But  then  the  second  difficulty  I  was  going  to 
mention  becomes  all  the  greater.  Even  as  it  is 
in  itself,  the  idea  of  the  incarnation,  the  idea 
that  a  divine  person  became  the  subject  of  a 
human  life,  restricted  with  regard  to  time  and 
space,  involves  the  greatest  difficulties.  For 
we  cannot  imagine  the  Godhead  as  being  con- 
stricted by  the  limitations  of  human  existence. 
Then  only  two  alternatives  remain.  We  must 
either  assume  that  the  "Son  of  God,"  when  he 
became  man,  did  not  cease,  separate  from  his 
humanity,  to  pervade  the  world  in  divine  maj- 
esty. Or,  with  Luther,  we  must  venture  the 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  173 

bold  thought  that,  in  virtue  of  the  union  of  the 
two  natures,  the  human  nature  from  the  first 
moments  of  its  beginning  has  been  partaking  of 
the  divine  omnipotence  and  omnipresence. 

This  latter  view,  viz.,  the  Lutheran  doctrine  of 
the  "ubiquity  of  Christ's  body,"  leads  us  to  ab- 
surdities. If  we  wish  to  avoid  these  really  un- 
bearable absurdities  we  are  referred  to  the  for- 
mer view.  But  does  it  not  destroy  the  idea  of 
incarnation?  Could  we  still  say  of  the  divine 
person  who  was  also  outside  the  historical 
Jesus,  pervading  the  world  in  divine  majesty, 
that  he  was  in  reality  incarnated?  Is  not  the 
idea  of  the  incarnation  in  this  manner  really 
changed  into  the  idea  of  a  divine  inspiration,  an 
inspiration  such  as  the  prophets  experienced 
without  any  change  in  God's  position  to  the 
world  ?  But  then  it  would  be  impossible  still  to 
say  that  the  second  person  of  the  holy  Trinity 
was  the  acting  subject  in  the  historical  Jesus. 
This  difficulty  evidently  becomes  greater  still 
if  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost  were  not  sep- 
arated from  the  incarnated  Son.  For  in  that 
case  it  is  still  more  impossible  to  retain  the  idea 
of  a  real  incarnation  of  the  Son.  Perhaps  these 


174  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

arguments  are  too  difficult  to  be  made  intelli- 
gible with  a  few  short  words.  But  I  may  not 
spend  more  time  on  them.  I  must  be  satisfied 
with  having  just  mentioned  them.  This  men- 
tion of  them  was  necessary.  For  here  lie  the 
greatest  difficulties  of  the  orthodox  Christology, 
which  cannot  be  surmounted  by  any  tricks  of 
reasoning. 

More  easily  understood  is  the  difficulty  which 
I  am  going  to  mention  in  the  third  and  last  place. 
The  divine  Trinity  can,  if  need  be,  perhaps  be 
thought  of  as  the  one  God,  the  triune  God,  before 
the  incarnation  of  the  second  person.  But  how  is 
it  after  the  incarnation  ?  It  is  orthodox  doctrine 
that  the  incarnated  Son  of  God  retained  his  hu- 
man form,  i.  e.  the  human  nature  he  had  assumed, 
even  after  his  ascension.  Can,  then,  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  incarnated  Son,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  on  the 
other,  be  conceived  of  as  being  confined  to  the  in- 
ternal relations  in  which  each  person  stands  to 
the  other  within  the  one  Godhead  ?  And  if  this 
is  not  the  case,  the  oneness  of  the  Trinity  is  dis- 
solved after  the  incarnation;  the  Trinity  has 
become  something  different  after  the  incarnation 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  175 

from  what  it  was  before.1  If  neither  is  the  case, 
then  the  humanity  of  Christ  stands  beside  the 
Trinity.  And  then,  also  during  the  earthly  life 
of  Jesus,  it  could  not  have  stood  in  a  real  personal 
union  with  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity. 
Then  the  idea  of  the  incarnation  here  again 
changes  into  that  of  an  inspiration.  Our  dog- 
matics, I  think,  does  not  frankly  face  these  diffi- 
culties. This,  however,  does  not  overcome  them. 
These  difficulties  alone  are  sufficient  to  wreck 
the  orthodox  Christology.  Augustine,  the  cre- 
ator of  the  Occidental  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
when  pressed  by  others,  asked  himself  whether 
the  exalted  Christ  could  see  God  with  his  bodily 
eyes,  and  he  answered  the  question  in  the  nega- 
tive.2 This  proves  that  the  difficulties  we  have 
discussed  broke  up  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  and 
the  closely  related  Christology  even  for  Augustine 
himself.  And  the  cause  of  this  was  not  only  that 


1  As  F.  L.  Steinmeyer,  once  professor  at  the  University  of  Ber- 
lin (f  1900),  did  not  hesitate  to  assume  when  he  said:  "Oder  wann 
halts  der  Vater  je  zuruckempfungen,  was  er  in  dieser  heiligen  Nacht 
(Christmas)  gegeben  ?  Was  Gott  gibt,  das  verbleibt  den  Empfdngern ; 
in  dem  Sinne  wird  es  nie  wieder  das  Seine,  in  zvelchem  er  es  einst 
besessen"  (Beitrdge  zum  Schriftverstdndnis  in  Predigten,  I,  2d  edi- 
tion, Berlin,  1854,  p.  41). — 2  Ep.  92,  Migne,  series  lat.  XXXIII, 
p.  318;  comp.  ep.  161,  ibid.,  p.  702  /. 


i76  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Augustine  and  the  whole  church  orthodoxy  as 
far  as  the  eighteenth  century  pictured  Christ's 
body  of  glory1  too  much  like  an  earthly  body 
when  speaking  of  the  bodily  eyes  of  the  exalted 
Christ;  the  difficulties,  on  the  contrary,  un- 
avoidably remain  so  long  as  the  humanity  of  the 
exalted  Christ  is  conceived  as  something  differ- 
ent from  his  Godhead. 

There  are  probably  Christians  on  whom  these 
rational  arguments  will  make  no  impression. 
The  belief  in  the  triune  God,  they  think,  is  ir- 
rational as  it  is;  a  few  irrationalities  more  do 
not  make  the  matter  more  difficult.  I  do  not 
think  that  such  thoughts  are  pious.  In  our 
time,  too,  we  must  be  on  our  guard  lest  it  may 
be  said  of  us:  The  name  of  God  is  blasphemed 
among  the  Gentiles  through  you.2  But  so  much  is 
true:  no  one  of  us  could  find  fault  with  Chris- 
tians for  accepting  these  irrationalities  if  the 
orthodox  Christology,  which  includes  these  ir- 
rationalities, were  presented  by  the  Scriptures. 

But  that  is  not  the  case.  This  is  the  second 
point  I  have  to  prove  to-day.  It  is  an  extremely 
wide  domain,  viz.,  the  whole  domain  of  the  Chris- 

iPhil.  3  :  2 1.—2  Rom.  2  124. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  177 

tological  views  of  the  New  Testament,  which 
we  now  come  to  face.  It  is  impossible  in  a  short 
lecture  to  enter  into  these  views  of  the  New 
Testament  in  all  their  details.  I  must  be  sat- 
isfied with  calling  attention  to  a  few  decisive 
points.  Five  will  suffice. 

It  is  a  view  of  vital  importance  to  orthodox 
Christology  that  the  historical  Jesus  is  the  pre- 
existent  Son  of  God.  Do  we  find  anything  about 
this  in  the  New  Testament?  Certainly  many 
New  Testament  passages  assert  the  pre-exist- 
ence  of  Christ;  that  is,  they  assert  or  assume 
that  Jesus  did  not  begin  to  exist  when  his  earthly 
life  began.  0  Father,  Jesus  says  in  the  high- 
priestly  prayer  in  the  Gospel  of  John,  glorify  me 
with  the  glory  which  I  had  with  thee  before  the 
world  was.1  But  where  in  the  New  Testament 
is  this  prehistoric,  yea,  this  antemundane,  Christ 
called  the  Son  of  God?  Where  are  we  told  that 
he  is  as  such  begotten  of  the  Father  before  the 
world  ?  In  the  prologue  of  the  Gospel  of  John, 
the  pre-existent  Christ  is  not  called  the  Son  but 
the  wordy  and  we  are  told  that  this  was  in  the 
beginning.2  Only  one  passage  in  the  Pauline 

JJohn  17  :  5. — 2  John  1:1,2. 


178  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

epistles  might  be  suspected  of  referring  to  an  an- 
temundane  birth  of  Christ.  In  Colossians  i :  18 
Paul  calls  Christ  the  first-born  of  every  creature. 
But  here  the  Greek  equivalent  for  first-born1 
only  means  that  he  was  before  every  creature 
and  above  all  creatures.2  Then  the  only  remain- 
ing support  of  the  later  doctrine  is  Jesus'  title 
Son  of  God,  which,  as  we  all  know,  occurs  very 
often  in  the  New  Testament.  But  in  the  New 
Testament  it  is  applied  to  the  historical  Jesus, 
either  with  reference  to  his  birth  out  of  the 
Spirit  of  God,3  or  because  the  Spirit  came  down 
upon  Jesus  at  his  baptism,4  or — without  ref- 
erence to  a  date  of  its  entrance — because  the 
Spirit  of  God  lived  in  him,5  or  because  Jesus  was 
the  Messiah,6  or  because  he  stood  in  a  unique 
position  of  love  toward  God.7  The  term,  the 
only  begotten  Son,  too,  only  signifies  what  was 
mentioned  last.  For  the  Greek  equivalent  for 
only  begotten8  does  not  mean  anything  else  than 

1 7r/owT6To/cos. — 2  Comp.  E.  Haupt's  interpretation  of..  Col. 
1:15  (Kommentar  iiber  das  N,  T.,  begriindet  von  H.  A.  W.  Meyer, 
viii  and  ix,  Die  Gefangenschaftsbriefe,  Gottingen,  1897,  p.  25  ff.) 
and  Psalm  89  :  27,  where  it  is  said  of  the  King  of  Israel:  " I  will 
make  him  my  first-born  (irpb)T6TOKoi>),  higher  than  the  kings  of  the 
earth" — 3Luke  I  135. — 4Mark  I  :  n. — 5  Rom.  I  :  3. — 6Matt. 
1 6  :  16. — 7Matt.  II  :  27,  and  in  the  Gospel  of  John. — 8 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  179 

unique  or  peerless.1  And  it  was  not  modern 
exegesis  that  first  interpreted  the  term  Son  of 
God  thus.  In  the  first  half  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury Marcellus  of  Ancyra  emphatically  pointed 
out  that  in  the  New  Testament  Jesus  is  called 
the  Son  of  God  only  after  the  incarnation,  and 
not  in  his  pre-existence.  And  the  older  apostolic 
fathers,  the  so-called  first  epistle  of  Clement, 
dating  from  about  95  A.  D.,  and  the  Ignatian 
letters2  interpret  the  term  Son  of  God  in  this 
manner  only. 

It  is  easier  to  show,  secondly,  that  the  idea 
of  the  triune  God,  as  dogmatized  later,  is  for- 
eign to  the  New  Testament.  We  surely  find 
the  belief  in  the  New  Testament  that  God  was 
in  Christ,  and  that  the  Holy  Spirit  that  lives  in 
the  single  Christians  and  in  the  whole  commu- 
nity is  the  spirit  of  God.  That  God  the  Father 
reveals  himself  also  in  the  Son  and  in  the  Spirit, 
that  is  a  conviction  which  is  in  accordance  with 
the  New  Testament.  But  there  cannot  be  the 
least  doubt,  nor  can  we  alter  the  fact,  that  when 

1  When  the  widow's  son  at  Nain  is  characterized  as  the  only  son 
of  his  mother  (Luke  7  :  12),  the  same  word  is  used  in  the  Greek  New 
Testament  which  in  John  I  :  14,  18  is  translated  only  begotten. 

2  Written  about  no  A.  D. 


1  8o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  New  Testament  speaks  of  God,  it  is  think- 
ing only  of  the  one  God  whom  Jesus  called  his 
Father  and  the  Father  of  the  faithful,  too.  This 
is  shown  without  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  by  the 
apostolic  greeting:  Grace  be  unto  you  and  peace 
from  God  our  Father  and  from  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.1  And  the  case  is  not  different  throughout 
the  New  Testament.  In  the  Gospel  of  John,  in 
the  high-priestly  prayer  of  Jesus,  we  even  read  : 
This  is  life  eternal,  that  they  might  know  thee,  the 
only  true  God,  and  Jesus  Christ.2  Also  the  well- 
known  prayerful  wish  of  the  apostle  Paul:  The 
grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  the  love  of  God 
and  the  communion  of  the  Holy  Ghost  be  with  you 
all3  points  in  the  same  direction.  For  the  apos- 
tle does  not  speak  here  about  three  persons  in 
the  one  God,  but  about  the  love  of  the  one  God, 
and  in  addition  thereto,  or  better:  in  connection 
with  it,  of  the  grace  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  com- 
munion of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

It  is  easier  still  to  show  that  orthodox  -Chris- 
tology  does  not  agree  with  the  New  Testament 
views  in  a  third  respect.  According  to  the  ortho- 


.  1:7;!  Cor.   1:2;  II  Cor.  I  :  I  ;  Eph.  I  :  i.  —  z  John 
17  13.  —  311  Cor.  13  :  13. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  181 

dox  Christology,  the  personal  subject,  the  su- 
preme I,  of  the  historical  Jesus  is  the  second 
person  of  the  holy  Trinity.  Does  the  fact  that 
Jesus  prayed  harmonize  with  this?  Does  the 
circumstance  that  he  said  to  Mary  Magdalene: 
/  ascend  unto  my  Father  and  your  Father  and 
to  my  God  and  your  God,1  harmonize  with  it  ?  We 
have  seen,  indeed,  that  the  self-consciousness  of 
Jesus  surpassed  the  measure  of  a  human  self- 
consciousness.  But  can  we  deny  that  in  the 
whole  New  Testament  a  human  self-conscious- 
ness is  the  frame  in  which  the  inner  life  of  Jesus 
first  comes  to  our  notice?  His  humility,  his 
obedience,  his  trust  in  God  cannot  be  inter- 
preted differently.  We  shall  discuss  in  the  last 
lecture  how  this  view  can  be  reconciled  with  the 
fact  that  the  frame  of  a  human  self-consciousness 
proves  to  be  too  strait  to  make  the  personality 
of  Jesus  intelligible.  Here  it  will  suffice  to  have 
shown  that  the  orthodox  Christology  which  con- 
siders a  divine  person  as  the  personal  subject  in 
Christ  does  not  correspond  with  the  New  Tes- 
tament views. 

The  fourth  point  I  wish  to  mention  is,  that 

JJohn  20  :  17. 


1 82  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  experiences  of  Jesus,  like  his  self-conscious- 
ness, are  at  variance  with  orthodox  Christology. 
Orthodoxy  of  all  ages  was  worried  by  the  fact 
that  we  are  told  of  Jesus,  with  regard  to  his 
youth,  that  he  increased  in  wisdom  and  stature 
and  in  favor  with  God  and  men.1  Could  this  be 
harmonized  with  the  assumption  that  the  real 
subject  of  the  historical  Jesus  was  the  eternal 
Son  of  God?  Orthodoxy  of  ancient  times  con- 
sidered these  two  statements  as  being  harmo- 
nized by  the  assertion  that  the  eternal  Son  of 
God  grew,  suffered,  and  died  only  according  to 
his  human  nature.  But  who  will  deny  that  our 
very  self  itself  is  growing  during  our  life  ?  And 
certainly  it  sounds  very  forced  to  say  that  the 
Son  of  God,  who  by  his  own  nature  could  never 
suffer,  suffered  nevertheless  in  his  human  flesh 
and  in  his  human  soul!  Surely  such  forced  con- 
structions are  quite  foreign  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment. 

Fifthly  and  lastly,  I  shall  have  to  point  out 
that  in  the  New  Testament  Jesus,  even  after 
his  exaltation,  appears  in  such  an  organic  con- 
nection with    the   human    race    as    hardly    to 
1  Luke  2  :  52. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  183 

agree  with  orthodox  Christology.  Especially 
those  very  writers  of  the  New  Testament  who 
most  obviously  do  not  assume  that  the  life  of 
Jesus  was  a  purely  human  one — viz.,  Paul  and 
John — make  this  very  clear.  For  Paul  the  risen 
Lord  is  the  first-born  from  the  dead,1  the  first-born 
among  many  brethren.2  The  faithful,  in  Paul's 
opinion,  are  predestinated  by  God  to  be  con- 
formed to  the  image  of  his  Son  as  heirs  of  God  and 
joint  heirs  with  Christ?  Very  similarly  we  read 
in  the  high-priestly  prayer  in  the  Gospel  of 
John :  They  are  not  of  the  world,  even  as  I  am  not 
of  the  world*  and :  Father,  I  will  that  they  also,  whom 
thou  hast  given  me,  be  with  me  where  I  am;5  that 
they  all  may  be  one,  as  thou,  Father,  art  in  me  and 
I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  one  in  us,  .  .  . 
that  they  may  be  one  even  as  we  are  one;*  and  Thou 
hast  loved  them  as  thou  hast  loved  me.7  In  Rev- 
elation we  find  the  same  thoughts.  Here  the 
exalted  Christ  says :  He  that  overcometh  I  will 
give  to  him  to  sit  down  with  me  in  my  throne,  as  I 
also  overcame  and  sat  down  with  my  Father  in  his 
throne* 

lCo\.  i  :  18. — 2Rom.  8  :  29. — 3  Rom.  8  :  29  and  8  :  17. — 4  John 
17  :  16. — BJohn  17  :  24. — 8  John  17  :  21. — 7  John  17  :  23. — 8  Rev. 
3  :2i. 


1 84  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

I  admit  that  these  words  would  be  misin- 
terpreted if  they  were  used  to  remove  the  dis- 
tance which,  according  to  the  New  Testament, 
exists  between  Christ  and  his  faithful  followers. 
Christ  is,  according  to  Paul — and  also  according 
to  John — the  Lord,  in  whose  name  every  knee 
should  bow  of  things  in  heaven  and  things  in  earth 
and  things  under  the  earth.1  But  the  passages 
quoted  show  undoubtedly  that,  according  to  the 
New  Testament  conception,  Jesus  is  the  first-born 
among  many  brethren  in  a  deeper  sense  than  or- 
thodox Christology  is  able  to  recognize — for, 
according  to  it,  Christ,  although  he  was  a  man 
because  he  assumed  human  nature,  yet  remained 
a  divine  subject. 

These  five  points  show  that  orthodox  Chris- 
tology does  not  agree  with  the  New  Testament 
views.  And  those  who  are  impartial  enough  to 
see  this  are  thereby  convinced  that  the  old  ortho- 
dox Christology  cannot  give  us  the  correct  inter- 
pretation of  the  historical  person  of  Jesus.  And 
there  is  hardly  a  single  learned  theologian — I 
know  of  none  in  Germany — who  defends  the 
orthodox  Christology  in  its  unaltered  form.  And 
1  Phil.  2  :  10. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  185 

all  modifications  which  can  be  observed  lie  in 
the  direction  of  removing  the  most  obvious  mis- 
take of  the  orthodox  Christology  by  doing  more 
justice  to  the  humanity  of  Christ.  I  shall  have 
to  say  something  about  such  modifications  of  the 
old  doctrine  in  the  following  lecture. 

To-day  it  only  remains  for  me  to  strengthen 
the  proof  that  orthodox  Christology  is  untenable 
by  pointing  out  that  this  Christology  was  born 
under  the  influence  of  Greek  philosophical  ideas 
which  we  no  longer  share. 

In  going  through  this  proof  I  shall  have  to 
appeal  to  the  closest  attention  and  to  consider- 
able mental  exertion  on  the  part  of  my  respected 
hearers.  But  if  I  succeed  in  mentioning  only 
the  principal  facts  I  hope  to  be  understood  with- 
out any  difficulty. 

I  must  follow  a  somewhat  circuitous  path. 
The  Gospel  of  John,  as  we  all  know,  begins  with 
the  words:  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and 
the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God, 
and  in  the  fourteenth  verse  of  the  same  chapter 
we  read :  And  the  Word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us,  and  we  beheld  his  glory,  the  glory  as  of 
the  only  begotten  of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and 


1 86  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

truth.  John  here  undoubtedly  speaks  about 
Jesus  Christ;  of  him,  he  says,  that  the  word  of 
God  was  made  flesh  in  him.  But  it  is  not  so  cer- 
tain what  is  meant  by  this  expression  the  Word. 
At  the  time  when  the  Gospel  of  John  was  written 
philosophical  speculations  were  current  which 
employed  this  expression  in  a  peculiar  sense. 
The  Greek  term  for  word  (Xctyo?)  has  two  mean- 
ings, "word"  and  "reason."  In  the  latter  sense 
the  term  had  been  used  by  the  pantheism  of  the 
Stoic  philosophy  when  it  described  God  both  as 
the  primitive  matter  of  the  world  and  as  the 
"Logos,"  i.  e.  the  reason,  which  pervades  the 
world.  This  Stoic  idea  of  the  "Logos"  was  modi- 
fied in  a  peculiar  way  by  the  Jewish — and,  with 
regard  to  his  thoughts,  also  Greek— philosopher, 
Philo  of  Alexandria,  a  contemporary  of  Jesus. 
Philo  did  not,  like  the  Stoic  philosophy,  con- 
sider God  immanent  in  the  world.  With  Plato 
he  held  the  transcendence  of  God,  and  in  his 
teaching  there  was  even  a  sharp  dualistic  an- 
tithesis between  God  and  the  world,  between 
the  supreme  Being  and  matter.  Philo,  there- 
fore, could  not  imagine  any  action  of  God  upon 
the  world  of  matter  save  through  intermediate 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  187 

powers.  The  central  power  of  God,  comprehend- 
ing in  itself  all  subordinate  powers,  is  for  Philo 
the  Logos.  He,  too,  considers  this  Logos  as  the 
reason  which  pervades  the  world.  But,  in  di- 
vergence from  the  Stoic  philosophy,  Philo  dis- 
tinguishes the  Logos  from  God.  He  calls  him 
"the  first-born  Son  of  God,"  "the  second  God," 
"the  organ  of  the  creation."  But  on  the  other 
hand  he  combines  this  Logos  so  clearly  with  God 
that  people  have  asked  again  and  again  whether 
the  Logos  is  conceived  of  as  personal  by  Philo 
or  whether  all  the  personality  ascribed  to  the 
Logos  by  Philo  is  only  meant  figuratively.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  for  Philo  the  Logos,  i.  e.,  the 
reason  of  God  pervading  the  world,  is  certainly 
to  some  extent  one  with  God  and  again  to  some 
extent  a  second  beside  him. 

Now,  people  have  not  been  wanting  who  as- 
serted that  the  term  Logos  in  the  Gospel  of  John 
is  to  be  taken  in  this  philosophical  sense  advo- 
cated by  Philo  and  circulated  widely  after  him. 
In  favor  of  this  they  quoted  what  John,  too,  says 
of  the  Logos :  All  things  were  made  by  him,  and 
without  him  was  not  anything  made  that  was 
made.1  There  was  also  a  time  in  German  the- 

JJohn  I  :3. 


1 88  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

ology  when  every  one,  who  did  not  interpret  the 
term  Logos  in  John  in  the  philosophical  sense, 
was  considered  behind  the  times  and  unscien- 
tific. This  time  is  not  quite  past,  but  it  is  ap- 
proaching its  end.  I,  for  my  part,  never  con- 
sidered this  hypothesis  probable.  For  it  is  quite 
plain  that  the  beginning  of  John's  Gospel  refers 
to  the  beginning  of  the  first  book  of  Moses. 
There  we  have  the  same  introduction:  In  the 
beginning.  And  every  school-boy  knows  what 
the  medium  of  creation  was  here.  The  word! 
For  and  God  said  is  repeated  in  the  narrative 
like  the  burden  of  a  song.  It  is  likewise  well 
known  how  often  we  read  in  the  prophets  of 
the  Old  Testament:  The  word  of 'the  Lord  came 
unto  the  prophet.1  John,  in  my  opinion,  was  think- 
ing of  these  two  circumstances.  God  first  re- 
vealed himself  in  the  creation,  and  then  to  Israel, 
especially  when  his  word  came  to  the  prophets. 
Jesus  Christ  not  only  brought  the  word  of  God, 
as  the  prophets  did;  he  was  the  Word  in  every- 
thing he  said  and  did;  the  word  was  made  flesh 
in  him.  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  an  incar- 


1  Comp.,  e.  g.,  I  Sam.  15  :  10;  Jer.  I  :  2;  2  :  i;  7  :  i;  Ezek.  6  :  i; 
Hosea  i  :  i;  Joel  i  :  i;  Jonah  i  :  i;  Micah  i  :  i;  Zeph.  i  :  i; 
Haggai  i  :  i;  Zech.  i  :  i. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  189 

nation  theory  behind  these  words.  The  sen- 
tence, "The  word  was  made  flesh,"  means  more 
than  when  we  say,  e.  g.,  "In  this  man  all  the 
amiable  qualities  of  his  forefathers  are  person- 
ified." But  this  way  of  speaking,  in  my  opinion 
comes  nearer  to  the  meaning  of  what  John  says, 
"The  word  was  made  flesh,"  than  the  later  in- 
carnation theories.  But  this  is  of  minor  impor- 
tance. What  I  want  to  say  is  this:  in  the  Gospel 
of  John  the  term  Logos  has  nothing  to  do  with 
philosophy.  Here  it  simply  means  "word." 

I  may  adduce  two  arguments  in  favor  of 
this  assertion.  In  the  book  of  Revelation  the 
term  Logos  also  takes  a  prominent  place.  In 
a  grand  picture,  in  which  the  seer  describes 
Christ's  return  for  the  last  judgment,  he  says:1 
/  saw  the  heaven  opened,  and  behold  a  white  horse, 
and  he  that  sat  thereon  was  called  Faithful  and 
True  .  .  .  and  he  hath  a  name  written  (viz.,  upon 
him  or  upon  his  horse)  that  no  one  knoweth  but  he 
himself.  Then,  in  the  next  verse,  it  is  said :  And 
he  is  arrayed  in  a  garment  sprinkled  with  blood, 
and  his  name  is  called  "  The  Word  of  God."  Here 
it  is  not  the  pre-existent  Christ  who  is  called  the 

1  Rev.    19  :  1 1  ff. 


i9o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

Logos.  Hence,  there  is  no  room  here  for  the 
logos-idea  of  Philo.  The  returning  Christ,  who 
fulfils  all  the  words  and  prophecies  of  God,  and 
who  is  therefore  called  Faithful  and  True,  is 
called  the  Word  of  God  for  this  very  reason,  that 
God's  Word  becomes  full  truth  in  him.  No 
less  convincing  are  two  passages  in  the  letters 
of  Ignatius,  written  about  no  A.  D.  These 
letters  are  strongly  influenced  by  Johannine 
thought.  For  this  reason  it  is  important  that 
Ignatius  calls  Christ  the  Word  of  God  coming 
forth  out  of  silence,1  i.  e.,  the  Word  of  revelation 
with  which  God  breaks  the  silence  which  he  had 
observed  up  to  that  moment.  In  the  same  sense 
Ignatius  also  calls  Christ  the  truthful  mouthy 
through  which  the  Father  has  spoken.2  Here,  in 
Ignatius,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
term  Logos  has  nothing  to  do  with  philosophy. 
And,  as  Ignatius  is  dependent  on  John,  his  con- 
ception may  give  us  a  clew  for  the  correct  inter- 
pretation of  the  term  in  John. 

But  what  we  do  not  have  in  John  and  Ignatius 
we  find  in  later  times.  And  we  must  admit  that 
the  characterization  of  Christ  as  the  Logos  in 

1  Ep.  ad.  Magnes.,  8,  2. — z  Ep.  ad.  Romans,  8,  2. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  191 

John  made  this  possible.  The  Greek  apologists 
of  the  second  century,  educated  Christians,  who 
tried  to  defend  Christianity  against  the  pagans, 
combined  the  philosophical  logos-idea  of  their 
time  with  their  Christology.  To  them  the  pre- 
existent  Christ  was  the  reason  of  God  pervading 
the  world,  his  Son,  because  before  all  worldly 
time  he  was  produced  by  God,  being  a  second  one 
beside  the  God  of  the  universe,  but  of  the  same 
kind  with  him,  as  produced  of  his  substance. 
There  we  have  the  foundation  of  the  orthodox 
Christology.  But  only  the  foundation.  For  to 
the  apologists  the  Logos  and  God  were  two  in 
number  without  any  restriction,  and,  besides, 
the  apologists  did  not  regard  the  Logos  as  being 
eternal;  he  is  begotten  or  created  by  God  (they 
do  not  yet  make  a  sharp  distinction  between 
these  two)  at  the  time  of  the  creation  of  the 
world  and  with  the  purpose  that  he  might  be  the 
creative  organ. 

The  latter  was  the  first  to  be  corrected  by 
the  later  development.  Origen,  the  greatest 
theologian  of  the  old  Greek  church,  who  died 
in  254,  made  this  correction.  He  was  highly 
educated  in  philosophy,  and  his  philosophical 


i92  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

thoughts  were  akin  to  those  of  the  first  teachers 
of  the  Neoplatonic  philosophy,  which  arose  in 
his  time.  These  Neoplatonists  regarded  as  the 
eternal  core  of  this  sensible  world,  if  I  may 
say  so,  an  eternal  ideal  world  of  immaterial 
beings,  which  existed  also  before  the  created 
world.  An  eternal  ideal  world,  I  say.  That  did 
not  exclude  the  idea  of  God  in  their  thought. 
God,  in  their  opinion,  is  the  original  source  of 
this  ideal  world.  Eternally  he  calls  this  world 
into  existence,  as  light  always  radiates  splendor 
and  brightness  and  heat.  Thus,  too,  Origen 
thought.  The  first  of  the  immaterial  spiritual 
beings  of  the  immaterial  world  which  he  derived 
from  God  is  the  Logos.  Through  him  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  all  other  immaterial  beings,  the  angels 
and  the  souls  of  men,  were  created.  Here,  for 
the  first  time,  we  have  the  idea  of  the  eternal 
begetting,  that  is,  the  idea  that  the  Logos  or 
Son  was  begotten  of  the  Father  from  all  eternity. 
In  the  case  of  Origen,  this  idea  was  not  a  strange 
one.  For  just  as  the  Logos  is  begotten  of  the 
Father  from  all  eternity,  so  all  other  immaterial 
spirits  are  eternally  created  through  him  by 
God.  For  Origen  the  idea  of  an  eternal  beget- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  193 

ting  of  the  Son  was,  therefore,  nothing  irrational, 
but  rather  a  special  case  of  the  eternal  causation 
of  the  immaterial  ideal  world  by  God.  Later 
on  the  Origenistic  idea  of  an  eternal  immaterial 
world  was  abandoned.  But  the  idea  of  the  eter- 
nal begetting  of  the  Logos,  or  Son,  remained, — 
now  nothing  more  than  an  irrational  fragment 
of  a  total  conception  which  was  formerly  more 
intelligible. 

The  second  shortcoming  which,  as  we  saw, 
the  thoughts  of  the  apologists,  when  compared 
with  the  later  church  doctrine,  show,  was  not 
remedied  even  by  Origen.  Just  as  for  the  apol- 
ogists God,  the  creator  of  the  universe,  and  his 
Logos  were  two  in  number — occasionally,  Justin, 
one  of  these  apologists,  also  adds  the  Spirit  and 
the  whole  angelic  host1 — so  for  Origen  the  su- 
preme God  and  the  Logos  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
were  three  in  number,  a  Trinity,  not  a  Triunity, 
three  hypostases,  or  essences,  as  he  called  them. 
In  the  fourth  century,  after  long  struggle,  which 
I  cannot  describe  here,  the  point  was  reached 
where  a  distinction  was  made  between  the  terms 
which  for  Origen  still  had  the  same  meaning, 
I4pol.,l,  13,  1-3. 


194  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

viz.,  between  hypostasis  and  essence.  Now  it 
became  orthodox  doctrine:  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Spirit  have  one  essence  or  substance, 
but  they  are  three  hypostases — or  "persons,"  as 
the  Occident  said.  The  Orient  has,  on  the  whole, 
not  gone  beyond  this  conception.  The  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity  there  retained  a  tritheistic 
character.  For  to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Orient 
the  Godhead  is  one,  because  the  Son  and  the 
Spirit  only  derived  their  origin  from  the  one 
Father-God  and  because  they  are  with  him  of  the 
same  kind  or  substance,  of  the  same  power,  of 
the  same  eternity.  We  may  find  it  strange  that 
this  was  considered  as  doing  justice  to  Christian 
monotheism.  But  it  becomes  more  intelligible 
when  we  consider  that  our  clearly  defined  idea 
of  personality  was  unknown  in  those  times.  God 
was  looked  upon  as  the  highest  essence,  and  as 
long  as  no  other  equally  high  Being  was  placed 
side  by  side  with  him,  people  thought  monothe- 
ism was  preserved  intact,  even  if  two  further 
hypostases  were  regarded  as  having  emanated 
from  this  one  highest  essence. 

In  the  Western  church  Christian  monothe- 
ism has  been  restored  by  the  great  Augustine 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  195 

(f  430).  For  him  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the 
Spirit  are  the  one  God.  He,  too,  in  thinking  so 
was  influenced  by  philosophical  ideas.  As  phi- 
losopher, he  considered  the  idea  of  oneness  and 
the  idea  of  simplicity  indispensable  to  the  idea 
of  God.  God  is  for  him  the  highest  absolute  in- 
divisible and,  therefore,  simple  Being  or  essence, 
in  contrast  with  the  world,  which  exists  only 
conditionally  in  its  manifoldness  and  change- 
ableness.  But  biblical  ideas,  too,  induced 
Augustine  to  modify  the  older  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  He  wished  to  do  justice  to  monothe- 
ism, to  do  justice  to  the  Old  Testament  word: 
Hear,  Israel,  the  Lord  our  God  is  one  God.1  For 
this  reason  he  said  that  with  regard  to  the  world 
the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Spirit  always  act 
together  as  the  one  God.  The  distinctions  of  the 
persons  were  in  his  mind  limited  to  the  internal 
relations  within  the  Godhead,  viz.,  that  the  Son 
is  begotten  of  the  Father,  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
proceeds  from  the  Father  and  the  Son.  This 
is  the  origin  of  the  orthodox  doctrine  about  the 
Son  of  God  and  the  holy  Trinity  or,  better,  Tri- 
unity,  in  the  Western  church. 
1  Deut.  6  :  4. 


196  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

In  the  same  way  we  may  show  that  the  doc- 
trine of  the  two  natures  in  Jesus  Christ  originated 
in  the  culture  of  the  Graeco-Roman  world. 
Quoting  Goethe's  Faust,  we  may  speak  of  two 
souls  which  we  feel  in  our  breast,  a  lower  one 
with  sensual  desires  and  a  higher  one  which  is 
open  to  everything  ideal.  In  ancient  times  peo- 
ple would  in  such  a  case  speak  of  "two  natures" 
in  man.  We  even  know  of  a  more  developed 
form  of  this  idea  by  not  a  few  Christians  of  the 
second  century,  which,  by  combining  philosoph- 
ical thoughts  and  Christian  traditions,  tried  to 
form  a  general  view  of  the  world  and  its  history. 
I  refer  to  the  so-called  Gnostics.  Many  of  them 
distinguished  three  elements  in  the  world — the 
spiritual,  the  psychical,  and  the  material.  Man 
according  to  them  had  or  could  have  three  nat- 
ures—a spiritual,  a  psychical,  and  a  material  or 
bodily  one.  The  question  how  the  unity  of  self- 
consciousness  was  to  be  realized  in  such  a  case 
did  not  cause  these  speculators  any  great  diffi- 
culty. The  strongest  of  these  natures  in  each 
case  was  considered  as  the  leading  one,  which 
really  ruled  over  the  others.  In  a  modified  form 
this  terminology  of  different  natures  was  even 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  197 

applied  to  animals.  We  possess  a  book  on  the 
peculiarities  of  several  animals,  the  so-called 
Physiologus,  which  is  preserved  in  a  later  Chris- 
tian revision,  but  is  in  its  original  pagan  form 
perhaps  as  old  as  the  second  century.  Here  the 
characteristic  peculiarities  of  the  animals  which 
are  mentioned  are  called  different  "natures "of 
these  animals.  Thus,  we  are  told  of  the  lion 
that  he  has  three  natures:  the  first  is,  that  he, 
when  scenting  a  hunter,  wipes  out  his  footprints 
with  his  tail;  the  second,  that  he  sleeps  with 
open  eyes;  the  third,  that  his  whelp  is  born 
dead  but  begins  to  live  on  the  third  day.1  Here 
"natures"  means  nothing  else  than  character- 
istic peculiarities. 

Now,  it  is  natural  that  Christians  at  a  very 
early  date — I  believe  from  the  very  begin- 
nings of  Christianity — observed  characteristics 
of  human  lowliness  and  characteristics  of  di- 
vine majesty  and  glory  in  Jesus  Christ.  Under 
these  circumstances  it  was  not  strange  for  that 
time  that  people  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  sec- 
ond century  spoke  of  "two  natures,"  the  human 

1 F.  Lauchert,  Geschichte  des  Physiologus,  Strassburg,  1889, 
p.  229  /. 


i98  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

and  the  divine  one,  which  were  to  be  distin- 
guished in  Christ.  The  question  how  the  unity 
of  such  a  person  was  to  be  imagined  did  not 
cause  any  difficulties  for  more  than  three  cen- 
turies. In  the  Eastern  church  many  theologians 
as  early  as  the  fourth  century  considered  the 
higher  nature,  the  divine  nature — that  is,  the  di- 
vine Logos — as  the  actual  subject  in  the  histor- 
ical Jesus,  while  his  humanity  was  looked  upon 
as  not  having  a  personality  of  its  own.  In  the 
Western  church  people  for  a  long  time  thought 
differently.  But  ultimately  the  Greek  view  pre- 
vailed. 

If  you  look  back  upon  all  I  have  gone  through, 
I  hope  you  will  understand  why  orthodox  Chris- 
tology  could  seem  quite  acceptable  as  long  as 
Greek  culture  survived.  It  harmonized  with  the 
culture  of  the  time.  The  incarnation  question, 
too,  caused  no  difficulty  to  Greek  thinkers. 
When  Celsus,  the  pagan  controversialist,  mock- 
ingly asked  whether  the  Logos  left  his  throne 
vacant  when  he  became  a  human  being,  Origen 
opposed  him  with  the  argument  that  God  fills 
all  in  all,  that  he  does  not  vacate  one  place  in 
order  to  betake  himself  to  another,  and  that, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  199 

therefore,  he  descends  to  men  only  by  means  of 
his  grace.1  And,  as  I  have  already  said,  all  Greek 
theologians  clung  to  this  view,  thinking  that  the 
Logos,  the  divine  reason,  pervading  the  world, 
after  his  incarnation,  in  spite  of  his  being  in 
Christ,  retained  his  position  toward  the  world, 
i.  e.y  continued  to  pervade  and  to  govern  the 
world.  Even  about  the  year  200  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  the  teacher  of  Origen,  still  said  quite 
naively  that  the  Logos  was  made  flesh  also  in 
the  prophets.2  In  short,  in  the  early  church  the 
idea  of  "incarnation"  was  not  yet  sharply  dis- 
tinguished from  that  of  a  divine  inspiration, 
but  in  the  course  of  time  the  distinction  became 
more  and  more  defined,  and  this  made  the  church 
doctrine  more  irrational  than  it  had  been  at  first 
when  people  began  to  use  the  term  Logos. 

And  that  is  the  case  with  the  whole  Christol- 
ogy  of  the  early  church.  In  the  older  times  the 
terms  of  Greek  culture  were  the  natural  forms 
by  which  the  people  of  those  times  tried  to  do 
justice  to  that  which  the  New  Testament  says 
about  Christ.  What  we  find  unsatisfactory  in 

I0rig.  c.  Celstim,  4,  5  and  4,  14,  ed.  Koetschau,  Leipsic,  1879, 
I,  277  and  285. 
2£xcerpta  19,  Opera,  ed.  W.  Dindorf,  Oxford,  1869,  III,  433,  5. 


200  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH? 

those  forms  remained  hidden  to  them.  No  age 
knows  itself  sufficiently.  In  those  forms  people 
had  their  faith  in  Christ  as  far  as  it  was  under- 
stood by  them. 

But  the  case  is  different  with  us.  We  either 
think  that  human  philosophy  can  form  no  ten- 
able ideas  at  all  about  God  and  things  divine, 
or  if  we  think  differently  we  have,  at  any  rate, 
other  views  than  Philo  and  the  Neoplatonists. 
Hence,  the  orthodox  doctrine  about  Christ, 
which  was  derived  from  the  Christology  of  the 
ancient  church,  contains  elements  which  to  our 
mind  are  contradictions.  We  also  notice,  there- 
fore, what  remained  hidden  to  the  theologians 
of  the  ancient  church,  viz.,  in  how  many  points 
the  old  Christology  does  not  do  full  justice  to 
the  New  Testament  views.  It  is,  therefore,  our 
duty  to  concede  that  orthodox  Christology  does 
not  give  us  an  appreciation  of  the  person  of 
Christ  which  is  able  to  satisfy  us. 

Can  we  come  to  such  an  appreciation  by  the 
aid  of  other  views  ?  This  question  will  occupy 
us  in  the  next  and  last  lecture. 


VI 
MODERN  FORMS  OF  CHRISTOLOGY 

T  BEGIN  now  my  last  lecture.  It  may  be 
useful,  first,  to  recapitulate  the  results  of 
my  previous  lectures.  We  have  seen  that  Jesus 
was  a  man  who  lived  in  this  world  of  ours.  But 
the  attempts  to  describe  his  life  as  a  purely  hu- 
man one  have  not  led  to  tenable  results.  They 
proved  to  be  inadequate  from  the  scientific  his- 
torical point  of  view,  because  they  do  not  al- 
low an  unprejudiced  appreciation  of  the  sources. 
Besides,  they  proved  inadequate,  because  the 
assumption  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  one  is  disproved  by  the  sources  and  by 
the  experiences  of  believers  in  all  ages.  For  the 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus  breaks  the  frame  of 
a  purely  human  life,  and  the  experience  of  be- 
lievers in  all  the  Christian  centuries  confirms 
the  assumption  that  the  disciples  of  Jesus  were 
right  in  seeing  more  in  him  than  a  mere  man. 
But  we  have  also  seen  that  orthodox  Christology 
cannot  give  us  a  satisfactory  appreciation  of  the 

201 


202  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

person  of  Jesus.  It  not  only  puts  insurmount- 
able obstacles  in  the  way  of  thinking  people,  but 
also  does  not  harmonize  with  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  is  intricately  interwoven  with  a  philo- 
sophical view  of  the  world  which  we  no  longer 
share. 

This  criticism  of  orthodox  Christology,  which 
I  tried  to  justify  in  the  last  lecture,  is  not  the 
property  of  a  few  people  only.  To  a  certain  ex- 
tent it  may  be  considered  as  generally  recog- 
nized by  the  whole  German  Protestant  theology 
of  the  present  time.  In  the  preceding  genera- 
tion there  was  still  a  learned  theologian  in  Ger- 
many who  thought  it  correct  and  possible  to 
reproduce  the  old  orthodox  formulas  in  our  time 
without  the  slightest  modification,  viz.,  Friedrich 
Adolph  Philippi,  of  Rostock  (f  1882).  At  present 
I  do  not  know  of  a  single  professor  of  evangelical 
theology  in  Germany  of  whom  this  might  be  said. 
All  learned  Protestant  theologians  of  Germany, 
even  if  they  do  not  do  so  with  the  same  empha- 
sis, really  admit  unanimously  that  the  orthodox 
Christology  does  not  do  sufficient  justice  to  the 
truly  human  life  of  Jesus  and  that  the  orthodox 
doctrine  of  the  two  natures  in  Christ  cannot  be 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  203 

retained  in  its  traditional  form.  All  our  sys- 
tematic theologians,  so  far  at  least  as  they  see 
more  in  Jesus  than  the  first  subject  of  Christian 
faith,  are  seeking  new  paths  in  their  Christology. 

The  modern  systematic  constructions  as  such 
are  of  no  interest  for  the  question  we  have  to 
deal  with.  Not  this  is  important  for  us,  how 
systematic  theology  is  to  formulate  the  doctrine 
about  Christ,  but  only  this:  how  we  are  to 
interpret  the  historical  person  of  Jesus.  Now, 
we  have  seen  that  orthodox  Christology  cannot 
give  us  a  satisfactory  appreciation  of  the  person 
of  Jesus.  We  must,  therefore,  ask  whether  we 
are,  by  the  aid  of  other  views,  in  a  position  to 
come  to  an  appreciation  of  the  person  of  Jesus 
which  harmonizes  better  with  the  sources  and 
with  modern  thought.  That  is  the  question  with 
a  discussion  of  which  I  shall  to-day  bring  my 
lectures  to  a  close. 

I  begin  the  discussion  by  referring  once  more 
to  orthodox  Christology.  It  has  one  peculiarity 
not  yet  touched  upon,  which  we  must  under- 
stand before  proceeding. 

Orthodox  Christology  professes  to  be  a  scien- 
tific knowledge.  In  orthodox  times  it  was  con- 


204  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

sidered  possible  for  a  learned  theologian  to  ex- 
pound this  knowledge  even  if  he  possessed  no 
living  faith  himself.  This  opinion  was  the  nat- 
ural consequence  of  the  views  about  the  holy 
Bible  current  at  that  time.  The  Bible  was 
looked  upon  as  the  verbally  inspired  book  of  rev- 
elation, which  communicates  knowledge  about 
the  supersensual  world  just  as  a  knowledge  of 
natural  things  may  be  gained  from  nature  and 
history.  The  principal  thing  was  to  understand 
this  book  of  revelation  and  to  combine  its  state- 
ments in  the  right  manner.  This  view  of  the 
Bible  has  rightly  been  abandoned  by  modern 
theology.  The  Bible  itself  does  not  claim  to  be 
verbally  inspired  divine  revelation,  and  its  con- 
tents frequently  do  not  harmonize  with  this 
assumption.  If  a  divine  revelation  has  really 
taken  place,  as  we  Christians  believe,  then  it 
took  place  not  through  a  book  which  God  in- 
spired, but  by  means  of  men  endowed  by  God, 
who  through  their  words  and  actions  made  God's 
truth  known  to  their  fellow-men  and  deepened 
it.  The  books  of  the  Bible  are  the  historical 
records  of  this  revelation.  And  we  have  already 
seen  how  this  is  the  case  with  the  New  Testa- 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  205 

ment  books.  They  record  this  revelation  when 
they  attest  the  faith  of  the  New  Testament 
writers  to  us.  Even  the  Gospels,  we  have  seen, 
give  us  the  story  of  Jesus  as  it  lived  in  the  faith 
of  the  community.  And  still  more  the  remain- 
ing New  Testament  books  are  testimonies  of 
the  faith  of  the  primitive  Christian  times.  This 
shows  that  orthodox  Christology  is  not  knowl- 
edge that  is  independent  of  faith.  It  is  a  mixt- 
ure of  historical  knowledge  and  assertions  of 
faith,  partly  of  the  New  Testament  writers, 
partly  of  later  Christians,  even  of  such  as  com- 
bined their  faith  with  philosophical  thoughts. 

Such  a  mixture  can,  as  such,  not  give  a  satis- 
factory answer  to  the  question  who  Jesus  was. 
It  is  possible,  indeed,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
right  thing  for  us  to  do,  to  combine  historical 
knowledge  and  assertions  of  faith  in  answering 
the  question  who  Jesus  was.  But  such  an  an- 
swer can  satisfy  us  only  if  it  is  a  combination  of 
our  convictions  of  faith  with  historical  truths,  and 
if  we  have  a  clear  notion  as  to  the  character  of 
this  combination,  i.  e.,  as  to  how  far  the  historical 
truths  extend  and  where  the  convictions  of  faith 
begin.  Our  first  task  for  to-day  will,  therefore, 


206  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

be  this:  to  ascertain  what  historical  knowledge 
gives  us,  and  what  faith  in  Christ  contains  in 
itself. 

The  first  question  we  already  considered  some 
time  ago.  Historical  research  shows  us  a  num- 
ber of  traits  in  the  historical  Jesus  which  it  can- 
not combine  into  a  homogeneous  picture  on  the 
basis  of  its  presuppositions.  It  shows  us  a  hu- 
man being  in  Jesus,  a  real  man,  who  in  many  re- 
spects stood  within  the  limitations  of  his  time; 
but  at  the  same  time  a  man  who  considered 
himself  the  Messiah  promised  by  God,  who  was 
aware  that  he  had  much  to  say  to  the  human 
race  in  the  name  of  God,  who  called  his  death 
the  sacrifice  of  the  New  Covenant,  who  was  con- 
vinced that  he  stood  in  a  unique  relation  to  God 
— a  man  who  did  not  leave  in  suspense  the  fact 
that  it  was  of  great  import  to  the  fate  of  everyone 
what  position  he  took  up  with  respect  to  him. 
We  saw  that  there  is  no  scope  for  this  self-con- 
sciousness of  Jesus  within  the  frame  of  a  purely 
human  life.  Historical  science,  which  is  forced 
to  recognize  the  analogy  of  human  experience, 
is,  therefore,  in  the  case  of  Jesus,  placed  before 
a  dilemma.  It  must  either  reduce  the  notices 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  207 

about  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  to  such  an 
extent  that  they  fit  into  the  frame  of  a  purely 
human  life;  or  it  must  declare  itself  incom- 
petent to  speak  the  last  word  on  this  question, 
i.  e.,  it  must  be  satisfied  with  a  frank  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  existence  of  these  heterogeneous 
elements  which  it  cannot  combine,  and  must 
then  leave  it  to  other,  not  purely  historical,  ob- 
servation to  unite  the  heterogeneous  elements 
into  one  uniform  whole. 

If  such  a  union  is  possible  at  all,  it  can  only 
be  effected  by  faith.  Our  question  now  is, 
therefore,  this:  What  convictions  are  included 
in  the  belief  in  Christ?  In  the  belief,  I  say.  Be- 
lief is  not  the  acceptance  as  true  of  what  other 
people  have  said  a  generation  or  sixty  genera- 
tions before  us.  Belief  is  confidence  which  is 
sure  of  itself,  confidence  which  is  based  upon 
real  inner  experiences.  But  human  experiences 
are  of  different  depths.  Not  those  experiences 
are  to  be  considered  as  authoritative  which  are 
gained  by  a  man  who  has  only  just  begun  to 
take  notice  of  Jesus.  Those  experiences  here 
come  into  consideration  which  are  the  common 
property  of  ripe  Christians  of  all  ages.  We  shall 


208  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

not  go  wrong  if  we,  in  pointing  to  these  ex- 
periences, lay  stress  on  that  which  belief  in 
Christ,  as  it  is  found  to-day,  has  in  common 
with  the  faith  of  the  first  Christians  shown  by 
the  New  Testament.  This  faith,  in  my  opinion, 
includes  two  things:  First,  that  Christ  becomes 
a  revelation  of  God  for  us,  andj  secondly,  that 
he  shows  us — and  that  in  his  own  person — what 
we  are  to  become  like. 

I  shall  have  to  enter  more  fully  upon  these 
two  points.  I  need  not  prove  that  the  former  is 
a  New  Testament  view.  It  harmonizes  with 
definite  statements  of  Jesus  which  are  handed 
down  to  us.  Not  only  in  John  does  he  say:  He 
that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father?  in  the 
synoptic  Gospels  also  it  is  said :  No  man  knoweth 
the  Son  but  the  Father,  neither  knoweth  any  man  the 
Father  save  the  Son  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  will 
reveal  him.2  John  gives  expression  to  the  thought 
that  Christ  is  the  revelation  of  God,  when  he  says : 
The  word  was  made  flesh?  and  without  any  im- 
agery he  declares :  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any 
time,  the  only  begotten  Son  .  .  .  he  hath  declared 
him.4  And,  as  we  saw,  Paul  calls  Jesus  the  image  of 

14  -.9. — 2  Matt,  n  :  27. — 3  John  i  :  14. — 4  John  I  :  18. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  209 

the  invisible  God,1  speaks  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.2  These  asser- 
tions of  faith  are  repeated,  often  in  a  new  shape, 
through  all  the  centuries  of  the  Christian  era, 
not  because  people  simply  repeated  what  the 
apostles  had  said,  but  because  their  inner  voice 
recognized  the  claims  of  Jesus  as  claims  of  the 
holy  God,  because  the  merciful  love  of  Jesus 
preached  the  love  of  God,  and  because  faith 
gained  the  courage  from  its  confidence  in  Jesus 
and  his  innocent  suffering  to  trust  in  this  merci- 
ful love  of  God.  And  it  is  not  only  the  past  that 
has  experienced  this.  The  present,  too,  knows 
this  experience;  many  in  our  midst  know  it. 
We  can  easily  show  this  if  we  try  to  eliminate 
from  our  thoughts  everything  we  have  experi- 
enced of  Sod  merely  through  Jesus,  either  directly 
or  indirectly.  Would  any  knowledge  of  God 
remain?  Much,  indeed,  if  we  recognize  the 
prophets  of  the  Old  Testament.  But  they  be- 
long to  Jesus;  Jesus  did  not  preach  a  new  God, 
but  wished  to  reveal  more  fully  the  one  God 
whom  Israel  already  knew.  And  still  even  the 
prophets  would  leave  us  in  many  imperfections. 

^ol.  I  :  15.— 211  Cor.  4:6. 


210  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

For  relics  of  Jewish  national  limitations  are  still 
to  be  found  in  them,  and  all  their  expectations 
of  God's  loyalty  to  his  covenant  would  appear 
buried  with  the  Babylonian  exile,  with  the  poor 
state  of  affairs  which  followed,  with  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem  and  the  dispersion  of  Israel 
among  all  nations.  And  if  we  eliminate  the 
prophets,  can  the  philosophy  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  teach  us  to  know  God?  Their  God  is 
after  all  but  a  part  of  the  world,  the  primitive 
matter  and  the  rational  order  of  the  universe — 
nothing  more.  The  philosophy  of  the  Christian 
centuries  likewise  does  not  bring  us  any  farther. 
If  we  eliminate  what  it  took  out  of  the  New 
Testament,  it  is  not  a  hair's  breadth  in  advance 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  old  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans. All  we  possess  of  the  knowledge  of  God 
we  have  through  Jesus,  though  in  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Old  Testament.  We  are  impressed 
as  by  a  word  of  God  when  we  hear  Jesus  say- 
ing :  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  hearty  for  they  shall 
see  God; l  and :  Whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother 
without  a  cause  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judg- 
ment;* and:  Whosoever  looketh  on  a  woman  to  lust 
1  Matt.  5  :  8. — z  Matt.  5  :  22. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  211 

after  her  hath  committed  adultery  with  her  already 
in  his  heart;1  and:  Be  ye,  therefore,  perfect  even  as 
your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect  ;2  and 
many  other  sayings.  We  hear  a  kind  invitation 
of  God  when  Jesus  says:  Come  unto  me  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden  and  I  will  give  you 
rest,3  or:  The  Son  of  man  is  come  to  save  that  which 
was  lost.4  Above  all,  to  my  mind,  it  is  the  cross 
of  Christ  which  to-day  still  reveals  God's  char- 
acter to  us.  Here,  too,  I  grant,  many  erroneous 
ideas  have  crept  in.  It  was  erroneous  to  say 
that  it  was  the  suffering  and  death  of  Jesus  which 
moved  God  to  mercy  toward  the  human  race. 
Here  an  erroneous  theory  has  been  combined 
with  the  faith  in  God's  love,  a  theory  which 
originated  in  paganism.  For  it  is  pagan  to  think 
that  God  has  to  be  reconciled  by  sacrifices. 
Even  among  the  Jews  sacrifices  had  a  different 
meaning.  They  were  looked  upon  as  instituted 
by  God  himself,  in  his  grace,  lest  the  Jews  should 
forget  his  holiness  when  approaching  him.  And 
especially  the  sacrifice  of  the  covenant  was  but  a 
token  which  was  to  assure  Israel  of  the  grace  of 
God;  it  did  not  cause  this  grace.  And  in.ac- 

1Matt.  5  :  28. — 2Matt.  5  145. — 3Matt.  II  :  28. — 4Matt.  18  :  n. 


212  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

cord  with  this  view  the  New  Testament  says: 
God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  be- 
gotten Son,1  and  Paul  declares :  God  was  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  world  unto  himself.'2'  The  sacrifice 
of  the  New  Covenant,  therefore,  was  not  neces- 
sary in  order  that  God's  wrath  might  be  changed 
into  love,  but  in  order  that  we  might  believe  in 
the  grace  of  God  without  making  light  of  sin. 
The  holy  God  can  only  forgive  if  people  accept 
his  grace  in  the  right  manner.  And  we  can  ex- 
perience to  the  present  day  that  the  suffering 
of  Christ  enables  us  more  than  anything  else  to 
accept  the  grace  of  God  in  the  right  manner. 
The  man  who  feels  his  sin  and  then  remembers 
that  Jesus,  who  committed  no  sin  and  had  no 
other  wish  than  to  serve  mankind,  was  put  to 
death,  in  spite  of  this,  by  the  wickedness  of  men, 
that  man  will  feel  again  and  again  what  the  first 
Christians  felt:  he  suffered  what  we  deserved 
to  suffer;  he  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions; 
he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities?  That  man  will 
understand  that  God  permitted  Jesus  to  suffer 
(or,  better:  made  him  suffer)  thus  in  order  that 
all  who  cling  to  him  might  gain  the  courage  to 

1  John  3  :  16. — 2 II  Cor.  5  :  19. — 3  Isaiah  53  :  5. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  213 

believe  in  God's  grace  without  forgetting  the 
great  contrast  of  their  sins  with  his  holiness. 
People  can,  therefore,  experience  at  the  present 
day  what  marvellous  power  belongs  to  that 
faith  which  Paul  expresses  with  the  words :  Gcd 
made  him  to  be  sin  who  knew  no  sin  (that  is,  he 
treated  Christ  as  a  sinner  by  giving  him  up  to 
such  an  opprobrious  death),  in  order  that  we 
might  le  made  the  righteousness  of  God  in  him.1 
This  faith  makes  the  heart  confident  before  God, 
and  yet,  conscious  of  God's  holiness,  for  it  does 
not  allow  us  to  look  upon  sin  as  of  little  conse- 
quence. At  the  same  time  it  strengthens  our 
power  to  do  good,  for  the  faithful  Christian  is,  as 
Paul  says,  dead  with  Christ  unto  sin.2  Thus  an 
ever-deepening  knowledge  of  the  grace  and  love 
and  holiness  of  God  is  opened  by  this  faith  in 
the  cross  of  Christ.  That  these  experiences  are 
not  foreign  to  the  New  Testament,  every  Bible 
reader  knows.  That  they  are  not  found  out- 
side of  the  Christian  community  is  shown  by  an 
observation  of  the  life  surrounding  us.  It  is 
knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  the 
crucified  Christ;*  it  is  the  knowledge  in  which 
the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  is  brought  to 

JII  Cor.  5  :  21. — n-  Rom.  6  :  8,  11. — 3 II  Cor.  4  :  6. 


2i4  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

perfection  for  the  single  Christian.  To  the  eye 
of  faith  Christ  is  the  revelation  of  God.  That  is 
one  thing  which  faith  possesses  in  Christ. 

The  other  one  I  characterized  thus:  that 
Christ  shows  us  in  his  own  person  what  we,  too, 
are  to  become  like  remains.  There  have  been 
times,  in  the  days  of  deism  and  rationalism,  when 
of  faith  in  Christ  only  this  remained,  that  he  is 
our  example.  For  this  very  reason  the  idea  that 
Christ  is  the  Christian's  prototype  was  in  dis- 
favor with  many  Christians  during  the  time 
following.  And  it  is  true  that  the  idea  can  be 
interpreted  wrongly.  For  we  cannot  here  on 
earth  think  and  act  and  live  and  die  as  Christ 
did.  For  this  he  stands  too  high  above  us,  and 
his  life  had  a  mission  with  which  ours  cannot 
be  in  the  least  compared.  Nevertheless,  the 
idea  that  Christ  is  our  example  was  very  real 
to  the  first  Christians,  and  even  to-day  it  im- 
presses itself  upon  every  faithful  Christian. 

The  former  I  shall  prove  not  only  by  the 
words  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospel  of  John:  /  have  given 
you  an  example  that  ye  should  do  as  I  have  done  to 
you,1  or  by  the  well-known  words  with  which 
Paul  places  the  unselfishness  of  Jesus  before 

1  John  13  :  15. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  215 

Christians:  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which  was 
also  in  Christ  Jesus,1  or  by  the  also  well-known 
passage  from  I  Peter:  Christ  suffered  for  you,  leav- 
ing you  an  example  that  ye  should  follow  his  steps.2 
We  must  here  attend  to  a  train  of  thought 
which  extends  much  farther  and  which  is  seen 
most  clearly  in  Paul.  We  see  it  in  other  parts 
of  the  New  Testament,  too,3  but  I  shall  confine 
myself  to  pointing  it  out  in  Paul.  It  is  the  idea 
that  Jesus  and  those  who  believe  in  him,  the 
Master  and  his  disciples,  the  Lord  and  his  ser- 
vants, belong  together — an  idea  which  Paul  ex- 
presses most  clearly  in  his  conception  of  Jesus 
as  the  beginner  of  a  new  mankind.  This  idea 
is  found  not  only  in  the  famous  passage  of  Ro- 
mans in  which  Paul  compares  Christ  as  the  new 
Adam  with  the  first  man,4  and  in  the  kindred 
passage  in  I  Corinthians  where  he  places  Christ, 
as  the  beginner  of  a  spiritual  mankind,  i.  e.,  a 
mankind  guided  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  by  the 
side  of  Adam,  the  beginner  of  the  natural  man- 
kind.5 We  find  this  idea  everywhere  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Paul:  when  he  says  that  we  shall  put  on 

aPhil.  2:5. — 8I  Peter  2:21. — 3Comp.,  e.  g.,  Matt.  10:25; 
John  17  :  10,  18  /.,  21-24;  Heb.  12  :  2;  Rev.  2  :  28;  3:4,  12,  21. 
— 4Rom.  5  :  12-21. — 6I  Cor.  15  :  45-49. 


2i6  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

the  new  man,1  or  put  on  Christ?  or  when  he  calls 
Christ  the  first-born  among  many  brethren*  the 
first-fruit  of  them  that  slept,*  or  the  first-born  from 
the  dead?  And  the  apostle  connects  this  opin- 
ion about  Christ  as  the  beginner  of  a  new  man- 
kind closely  with  the  other  one,  that  he  is  the 
image  of  God.  We  all,  he  says,  with  unveiled 
face  reflecting  as  a  mirror  the  glory  of  the  Lord  are 
transformed  into  the  same  image  from  glory  to 
glory  even  as  from  the  Lord  the  spirit*  And  when 
in  the  next  chapter  he  says :  It  is  God  that  said, 
Light  shall  shine  out  of  darkness,  who  shined  in 
our  hearts  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ1 — it  is  evi- 
dent that  he,  when  writing  this,  was  thinking 
of  that  which  we  read  in  the  story  of  the  crea- 
tion: God  said,  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was 
light*  Here,  too,  the  beginning  of  a  new  man- 
kind in  Christ  is  placed  beside  the  first  creation. 
To  modern  believers  this  idea  is  perhaps  not  so 
full  of  life  as  it  was  to  the  apostle  Paul.  But 
even  in  our  day  every  one  who  begins  to  be- 
lieve in  Christ  experiences  this,  viz.,  that  an  im- 

1  Col.  3  :  10;  Eph.  4  :  24. — 2  Gal.  3  :  27. — z  Rom.  8  :  29. —  4I 
Cor.  15  :  20. — *  Col.  i  :  18. — 6 II  Cor.  3  :  18. — 7 II  Cor.  4  :  6. — 
8  Gen.  i  13. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  217 

age  is  put  before  him  of  what  he  is  to  become. 
And  even  to-day  it  is  a  very  common  form  of 
Christian  hope:  "Christ  lives;  with  him  I  too 
shall  live."  Even  to-day  we  are  comforted  at 
the  grave-side  by  the  words :  Our  citizenship  is  in 
heaven,  from  whence  also  we  wait  for  a  Saviour, 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  shall  fashion  anew  the 
body  of  our  humiliation  that  it  may  be  conformed 
to  the  body  of  his  glory.1 

We  have  thus  proved  what  I  stated,  viz.,  that 
faith  in  Jesus  contains  these  two  points:  that  it 
is  Christ  in  whom  God  is  revealed  to  us,  and  that 
he  is  the  beginner  of  a  new  mankind.  In  what 
relation  does  this  faith  now  stand  to  the  con- 
tradictory traits  which  historical  science  can 
show  in  the  historical  Jesus  without  being  able 
to  unite  these  traits  in  one  picture?  Evidently 
what  the  historical  science  can  show  harmonizes 
very  well  with  faith.  If  Jesus  had  not  been  a 
real  man,  who  lived  in  this  world  of  ours,  he 
could  not  have  been  the  beginner  of  a  new  man- 
kind nor  could  he  have  been  our  example.  And, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  circumstance  that  the 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus  surpassed  purely  hu- 
1  Phil.  3:20. 


218  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

man  bounds  harmonizes  perfectly  with  the  fact 
that  he  becomes  a  revelation  of  God  to  the 
believer. 

Faith  will,  therefore,  have  to  oppose  the  sci- 
ence of  history,  if  the  latter,,  unwilling  to  recog- 
nize that  Jesus  stands  beyond  the  reach  of  its 
standards,  thinks  that  it  has  to  eliminate  those 
traits  in  the  picture  of  Jesus  which  surpass  the 
ordinary  bounds  of  human  life.  Faith  will  have 
to  claim — and  it  has  a  right  to  do  so — that  his- 
torical science  shall  acknowledge  that  it  cannot 
say  the  last  word  about  Jesus.  Faith  and  the 
seemingly  contradictory  traits  in  the  picture  of 
Jesus  which  historical  science  can  show — those 
truly  human  and  those  surpassing  human  bounds 
— these  two  support  one  another. 

We  have  thus  gained  one  important  result, 
given  one  answer  to  the  question,  who  was 
Jesus  ?  And  this  answer  runs  thus :  he  was  a  real 
man,  and  yet  not  a  man  like  all  others, — a  man 
in  whose  case  the  analogy  of  all  other  human  ex- 
perience is  of  no  use,  a  unique  man  among  all 
the  children  of  God,  (or  sons  of  God  as  the  New 
Testament  says,)  the  unique  one,  the  only  be- 
gotten son. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  219 

But  does  this  give  us  a  real  appreciation  of 
Jesus,  an  appreciation  such  as  we  aim  at  with 
regard  to  other  historical  personages,  an  appre- 
ciation which  enables  us  to  comprehend  how 
Jesus  became  what  he  was,  an  appreciation 
which  makes  all  the  details  intelligible  as  the 
effects  of  the  inmost  kernel,  if  I  may  use  this 
expression,  of  his  personality?  Such  an  appre- 
ciation is  not  given  with  our  answer.  Can  we 
attain  to  such  an  appreciation  ?  Can  formulas, 
can  ideas,  be  found  which  are  able  to  make  the 
unique  historical  person  of  Jesus  more  intelli- 
gible than  in  the  orthodox  Christology? 

It  will  be  in  accordance  with  the  importance 
which  the  apostolic  testimony  about  Christ  has 
for  us,  if  we  first  ask  whether  the  New  Testa- 
ment gives  us  such  formulas  or  such  ideas.  But 
it  is  easier  to  put  the  question  than  to  answer  it. 
For  those  New  Testament  writers  who  seem  to 
have  had  an  explanation  which  satisfied  them 
of  Christ's  unique  position  have  not  expressly 
spoken  about  it  anywhere.  Even  in  Paul— with 
the  views  of  whose  faith  we  are  more  fully  ac- 
quainted than  with  those  of  any  other  biblical 
writer — even  in  Paul  we  find  only  a  few  hints 


220  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

as  to  how  he  explained  to  himself  the  unique 
position  of  Jesus.  Like  John,  he  assumed  that 
something  eternal,  divine,  appeared  in  this  his- 
torical person,  and,  like  John,  he  unified  in  his 
thoughts  this  eternal  something  and  the  his- 
torical Christ.  In  John  we  see  this  in  the  words 
of  Jesus  he  reports:  0  Father,  glorify  thou  me 
with  the  glory  which  I  had  with  thee  before  the 
world  was;1  and  Paul,  not  for  the  first  time  in 
Colossians2  but  even  in  I  Corinthians,  says  of 
Jesus  Christ:  We  have  one  Lord  Jesus  Christy  by 
whom  are  all  things  and  we  by  him?  This  idea, 
too,  that  Christ,  or  the  divine  element  in  him, 
had  already  been  the  organ  of  the  creation  of 
the  world,  is  not  peculiar  to  Paul.  We  find  the 
same  idea  in  the  Gospel  of  John4  and  in  the 
epistle  to  the  Hebrews.5  But,  in  spite  of  this, 
we  cannot  tell  how  Paul,  how  John,  how  the 
epistle  to  the  Hebrews  looked  upon  the  rela- 
tion of  this  divine  element  in  Jesus  to  the  one 
God.  People  who,  without  the  least  scruple, 
interpret  Paul,  John,  and  Hebrews  according  to 
the  dogmatics  of  later  times  will  probably  not 

1  John   17  :  5. — 2Col.    i  :  16. — 3I   Cor.  8  :  6. — 4John  I  :  3. — 
•Heb.  1:2. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  221 

understand  this.  But  it  is  none  the  less  un- 
doubtedly true.  It  is  even  proved  by  the  great 
variety  of  interpretations  which  the  Pauline 
Christology  has  found  in  the  theology  of  to-day. 
Thus,  up  to  the  present  day,  the  view — an  er- 
roneous one  in  my  mind — which  interprets  I 
Corinthians  15  147  /.  as  if  Paul  thought  of  Jesus 
in  his  pre-existence  as  a  heavenly  man,  has  not 
yet  died  out.  And  even  to-day  scholars  are  not 
agreed  whether  Paul  is  speaking  of  the  pre-ex- 
istent  Christ1  or,  as  I  believe  with  other  critics,2 
of  the  historical  Jesus,  when  he  says  of  Christ, 
Philippians  2:7:  He  emptied  himself,  taking  the 
form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  likeness  of 
men.  These  uncertainties  in  the  interpretation 
— not  to  mention  other  reasons — are  sufficient 
to  make  it  impossible  to  call  the  idea  of  Christ's 
pre-existence  in  the  form  which  it  has  in  Paul, 
John,  and  Hebrews,  a  solution  of  the  problem 
we  are  speaking  about.  In  the  form  which  later 
interpretations  gave  to  this  idea  it  will  occupy 

1  This  is  still  the  prevailing  opinion  among  modern  theologians. 

2  Comp.  A.  Schlatter,  Die  Theologie  des  Neuen  Testaments,  II, 
Calw,  1910,  p.  303  /.  ("not  only  the  pre-existent  Christ");    W. 
Liitgert,  Die  Vollkommnen  im  Philipperbrief,  Giitersloh,  1909,  p. 
39  f»»  W.  Warren  on  Phil.  2  :  7  {Journal  of  Theological  Studies, 
XII,  London,  1911,  pp.  461-463). 


222  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

us  later  on.  The  case  is  somewhat  different 
with  another  idea  which  frequently  occurs  in 
the  New  Testament,  the  idea  that  God's  Spirit 
lived  and  worked  in  Christ.  For  this  idea  is  not 
exposed  in  the  same  degree  to  such  a  variety  of 
possible  interpretations.  Nevertheless,  it  will 
be  expedient  to  treat  this  idea,  too,  in  a  later 
connection.  I  therefore  refrain  from  entering 
more  fully  on  the  New  Testament  views  here. 
In  the  interpretation  given  to  them  by  later  the- 
ologians, we  shall  meet  them  again. 

I  also  ignore  for  the  present  the  older  post- 
biblical  time.  Does  modern  theology  hold  out 
formulas  or  ideas  which  might  explain  to  us  the 
unique  character  of  Jesus  ? 

It  can,  of  course,  not  be  my  task  to  answer 
this  question  by  investigating  the  great  number 
of  modern  Christological  constructions.  It  will 
be  sufficient  if  I  mention  a  few  characteristic 
types.1 

Firstly,  I  shall  refer  to  a  theory  which  for 
some  time  people  believed  would  constitute  the 
final  solution  of  the  Christological  problem.  I 

1  Comp.  E.  Giinther,  Die  Entwicklung  der  Lehre  von  der  Person 
Christi  im  19.  Jahrkundert,  Tubingen,  1911. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  223 

refer  to  the  kenotic  theory.1  This  theory  en- 
joyed a  great  reputation  in  Germany  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  past  century  among  those  peo- 
ple who  wished  to  remain  near  to  the  orthodox 
traditions;  nor  has  it  died  out  among  us,  though 
it  has  been  pushed  pretty  far  back.  And  in 
England  this  theory  found  supporters  at  the 
very  time  when  it  began  to  disappear  in  Ger- 
many.2 In  Sweden,  too,  it  was  confidently  de- 
fended as  late  as  1903  by  Oskar  Bensow.3  In 
Germany  it  was  especially  the  Erlangen  the- 
ologians and  their  followers  that  defended  this 
kenotic  theory.  Following  a  more  insignifi- 
cant predecessor,  Gottfried  Thomasius  (f  1875) 
was  the  first  to  treat  it  fully,  in  1845,  and 
Franz  Frank  (f  1894)  still  retained  it  in  a  care- 
ful form.  The  Greek  term  Kenosis,  after  which 
the  theory  is  called,  is  taken  from  the  pas- 
sage in  Philippians  already  quoted  above,  in 
which  Paul  says:  Who  (viz.,  Christ),  being  in 
the  form  of  God,  counted  it  not  a  prize  to  be  on  an 


1  Comp.  my  article  "Kenosis"  in  the  Realencyklopddie  fur  pro- 
testantische  Theologie  und  Kirche,  3.  Auflage,  herausgeg.  von  A. 
Hauck,  X,  Leipsic,  1901,  pp.  246-263. — 2  Comp.  W.  Sanday, 
Christologies,  Ancient  and  Modern,  Oxford,  1910,  pp.  74-78. — 
3O.  Bensow,  Die  Lehre  von  der  Kenose,  Leipsic,  1903. 


224  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

equality  with  God,  but  emptied  himself,  taking  the 
form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  likeness  of 
men.1  The  Kenosis  is  the  self-emptying  of  the 
divine  nature  of  Christ  as  found  by  the  ke- 
notic  theory  in  these  words  of  Paul.  In  order  to 
make  a  really  human  life  of  Jesus  conceivable 
in  spite  of  his  divinity,  the  theory  asserts  that 
the  eternal  Son  of  God,  in  the  moment  of  his  in- 
carnation, emptied  himself  more  or  less  of  his 
divinity,  and  so  became  the  subject  of  a  really 
human  life,  while  his  divine  self-consciousness 
was  changed  into  a  human  one.  In  this  way 
people  thought  they  could  do  justice  to  both, 
viz.,  to  the  really  human  life  of  Jesus  and  to  the 
superhuman  self-consciousness  which  is  revealed 
by  not  a  few  of  his  words.  Jesus  could,  because 
the  Son  of  God  had  really  become  a  man  in  him, 
increase  in  wisdom  and  stature  and  in  favor  with 
God  and  man.2  He  could  pray,  develop  morally, 
hunger,  thirst,  and  suffer.  Only  gradually  the 
reminiscence  of  his  eternal  glory  awoke  more 
and  more  in  his  self-consciousness,  and,  at  the 
exaltation,  the  glory,  which  the  Son  of  God 
had  put  off  at  his  incarnation,  was  given  back  to 

l.  2:6,  7— 2 Luke  2 -.52. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  225 

the  God-man.  The  detailed  treatment  of  these 
thoughts  was  given  by  their  various  supporters 
with  a  varying  amount  of  carefulness  or  care- 
lessness. Wolfgang  Friedrich  Gess,  of  Breslau 
(t  1891),  the  most  reckless  advocate  of  the 
kenosis  theory,  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  the 
self-consciousness  of  the  Son  of  God  was  ex- 
tinguished at  the  moment  of  the  incarnation. 
Only  gradually,  he  thought,  did  it  emerge  again 
out  of  the  darkness  of  unconsciousness  in  which 
the  earthly  life  of  the  incarnate  Logos,  like  every 
human  life,  began.  But  even  in  a  more  carefully 
expressed  form,  indeed,  even  in  the  most  carefully 
expressed  form,  the  theory  is  untenable.  I  shall 
not  employ  my  time  to  show  that  this  is  not 
what  Paul  meant,  nor  shall  I  prove  that  the 
theory  manoeuvres  with  a  conception  of  the  di- 
vine Trinity  which  causes  monotheism  to  perish 
in  tritheism.1  Here  it  will  suffice  to  point  out  that 
this  theory  is  not  suited  to  effect  a  satisfactory 
appreciation  of  the  person  of  Christ.  To  plain 
thinkers  the  theory  may  seem  intelligible.  Is 
it  not  possible  for  a  German  officer  to  resign 
his  position,  to  come  over  to  America,  and,  if 

.  Realencyplopddie  usw.,  X,  263, 


226  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

he  likes,  to  live  here  as  a  plain  workman  ?  But 
he  surely  cannot  put  off  his  self  as  he  doffed  his 
uniform.  It  is  even  more  inconceivable  that  a 
divine  being  should,  have  changed  into  a  man. 
The  theologians  of  the  early  church  would  have 
turned  from  such  an  assertion  with  horror.  No 
church  theologian  would  have  dared  before  the 
nineteenth  century  to  speak  of  changes  which 
the  eternal  Son  of  God  suffered  in  his  essence  at 
the  incarnation.  Thoughts  that  remind  us  of  the 
kenotic  theory  are  found  only  in  a  heretical 
group  of  the  early  church,  among  a  few  Apol- 
linarists,  and,  after  the  Reformation,  outside  of 
the  school  traditions,  in  Menno  Simons  and  in  the 
lay-theologizing  of  Zinzendorf.  It  is  mythology, 
not  theology,  which  is  at  the  root  of  this  theory. 
Nor  are,  secondly,  those  modern  ideas  more 
tenable  which  likewise  decline  the  old  doctrine 
of  the  two  natures  in  Christ,  but  wish  to  retain, 
although  without  a  kenotic  theory,  the  idea  of 
the  orthodox  Christology  that  the  eternal  Son  of 
God  himself  became  the  personal  subject  of  a 
human  life.1  The  eternal  Son  of  God — so  is 

1  Comp.  K.  Thieme,  Die  neuesten  Christologien  in  Verhaltnis 
zum  Selbstbewusstsein  Jesu  (Zeitschrift  fur  Theologie  und  Kirche), 
18,  Tubingen,  1908,  pp.  401-472. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  227 

the  opinion,  e.  g.,  of  Professor  Kunze,  of  Greifs- 
wald,1  and  in  a  closely  related  form  of  Professor 
Schaeder,  of  Kiel2 — did  not  cease  to  be  God. 
For  to  be  God  and  to  cease  to  be  so  is  self- 
contradiction.  But  as  man  Christ  employed  his 
Godhead  (his  omnipotence,  his  omniscience,  etc.), 
only  in  a  human  form,  e.  g.,  when  he  performed 
the  miracles  of  divine  omnipotence  in  the  power 
of  his  prayer,  etc.  This  theory  is  also  untenable. 
For,  as  we  have  seen,  the  historical  picture  of 
Jesus  does  not  show  us  a  divine  self-conscious- 
ness of  this  kind.  And  to  speak  of  the  divine 
omnipotence,  omniscience,  etc.,  acting  in  hu- 
man form  is  an  ingenious  but  illicit  play  with  the 
attributes  of  divine  majesty.  I  can  understand 
when  people  say  that  from  the  wonderful  help 
often  afforded  by  Jesus  faith  can  learn  that  the 
almighty  God  can  help  wherever  he  wishes,  and 
that  in  the  sharp-sightedness  with  which  Jesus 
knew  what  was  in  man  faith  can  see  an  il- 

XJ.  Kunze,  Die  ewige  Gottheit  Jesu  Christi,  Leipsic,  1904  (an 
enlarged  lecture). 

2E.  Schaeder,  Die  Christologie  der  Bekenntnisse  und  die  mo- 
derne  Theologie  (Beitrdge  zur  Forderung  christlichen  Theologie, 
herausg.  von  A.  Schlatter  und  W.  Lutgert,  IX,  5),  Giitersloh,  1905; 
Das  Evangelium  Jesu  und  das  Evangelium  von  Jesus  (Beitrdge  usw., 
X,  6,  1906);  Die  Einzigartigkeit  Jesu  (in  Jesus  Christus  fur  unsere 
Zeit  von  Haussleiter,  Walther  usw.,  Hamburg,  1907). 


228  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

lustration  of  the  fact  that  God  understands 
our  thoughts  afar  of.1  But  such  a  practical  re- 
ligious thought  is  surely  quite  different  from 
the  rash  attempt  to  explain  in  human  words 
that  divine  self-consciousness  was  present  in 
Jesus  in  human  form,  that  divine  conscious- 
ness of  omnipotence  is  shown,  e.  g.,  by  the 
circumstance  that  Jesus  knew  that  his  Father 
heard  his  prayers  at  all  times.2  The  humanity 
of  Christ  does  not  receive  full  justice  from  this 
theory,  in  spite  of  all  earnest  attempts.  And,  if 
we  are  expected  to  understand  the  person  of 
Jesus  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  divine  self- 
consciousness  acting  in  human  form,  we  are 
placed  before  a  task  which  surpasses  all  our 
human  faculties  and  is,  besides,  contradictory 
in  itself.  These  explanations  certainly  do  not 
furnish  a  solution  of  the  Jesus-problem  which 
is  intelligible  to  us  human  beings. 

The    construction   of  Reinhold    Seeberg,    of 
Berlin,3  looks  more  intelligible  on  first  sight. 

1  Psalm  139:  2. — 2  John  II  :  42. 

3  R.  Seeberg,  Die  Grundwahrheiten  der  christlichen  Religion,  Leip- 
sic,  1902,  4th  edition,  1906;  Warum  glauben  wir  an  Christus? 
(Hefte  fur  evangelise  he  Weltanschauung  uszv.,  I,  9),  Gr.  Lichterfelde, 
2d  ed.,  1903;  Die  Personlichkeit  Christi  der  feste  Punkt  im  flies- 
senden  Strom  der  Gegenwart  (Neue  kirchliche  Zeitschrift,  XIV, 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  229 

Seeberg,  too,  starts  from  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  But  he  knows  better  than  the  support- 
ers of  the  kenotic  theory,  and  better  than  Pro- 
fessor Kunze  and  Professor  Schaeder,  that  the 
term  "person"  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
does  not  mean,  according  to  the  orthodox  tradi- 
tion, that  personal  independence  which  we  other- 
wise connect  with  the  term  "person";  he  knows 
that  it  points  only  to  a  relation  within  the  God- 
head between  Father  and  Son.  In  Seeberg's 
opinion,  the  term  is  an  expression  for  a  particu- 
lar direction  of  the  divine  will-energy  which  aims 
at  the  realization  of  the  church.  This  divine 
will-energy — such  is  the  opinion  of  Seeberg — 
created  the  man  Jesus  as  its  organ  and  worked 
through  him.  The  personality  of  Jesus  is  that 
of  his  humanity;  but  God's  personal  will  worked 
through  Jesus,  and  in  such  a  manner  that  Jesus 
in  his  personal  life  became  fully  at  one  with  this 
personal  will  of  God.  I  refrain  from  criticising 
the  ideas  on  the  Trinity  and  the  incarnation 
which  Seeberg  proposes  in  these  views — I  should 
more  easily  praise  their  correctness  than  their 

Erlangen  and  Leipsic,  1903,  pp.  437-457;  separately  edited,  Ber- 
lin) ;  Wer  war  Jesus  ?  (Abhandlungen  und  Vortrdge,  II,  Zwr  syste- 
matischen  Theologie,  Leipsic,  1909,  pp.  226-253.) 


230  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

orthodoxy — I  only  ask:  Has  this  theory  solved 
the  Jesus-problem?  has  it  made  the  unique 
character  of  Jesus  intelligible?  Too  intelligible! 
I  should  say.  Seeberg  is  as  well  acquainted  with 
the  inner  life  of  Jesus  as  if  he  had  been  the 
confidant  of  his  inmost  thoughts.  And  that,  I 
think,  condemns  this  attempt  to  explain  the 
unique  situation  of  Jesus.  For  the  sources  do 
not  give  us  such  accurate  information. 

Quite  differently  Schleiermacher1  and  Al- 
brecht  Ritschl2  tried  to  make  the  unique  posi- 
tion of  Jesus  intelligible  by  statements  which 
confine  themselves  to  his  human  life.  According 
to  Schleiermacher,  the  unique  character  of  Jesus 
consisted  in  the  singular  strength  of  his  conscious- 
ness of  God;  according  to  Ritschl,  it  consisted 
in  the  facts  that  Jesus  did  not  allow  anything  to 
interrupt  his  communion  with  God,  and  that 
he  had  the  unique  mission  to  establish  the  king- 
dom of  God  on  earth.  I  do  not  say  that  these 
thoughts  leave  no  room  for  the  superhuman 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus.  Neither  Schleier- 

1 F.  Schleiermacher  (f  1834),  Der  christliche  Glaube  nach  den 
Grundsdtzen  der  evangelischen  Kirche,  II,  Berlin,  1822. 

2  A.  Ritschl  (f  1889),  Die  christliche  Lehre  von  der  Rechtfertigung 
und  Versohnung,  III,  Bonn,  1874,  3d  edition,  1888. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  231 

macher  or  Ritschl  denied  this  characteristic  of 
Jesus'  self-consciousness.  But  for  this  very  rea- 
son these  formulas  are  no  explanation,  but  only 
a  description  of  the  unique  character  of  Jesus.  I 
do  not  wish  to  blame  them  for  this.  You  will 
see  that  I  myself,  like  many  other  theologians 
who  were  educated  in  Ritschl's  school,  know 
no  other  way  out  of  the  difficulties.  But,  if  we 
confine  ourselves  to  a  description,  this  descrip- 
tion must  be  complete.  And  I  do  not  believe 
that  this  is  the  case  with  Schleiermacher  and 
Ritschl.  The  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  is  for 
Schleiermacher  and  Ritschl  an  indirect  one,  so 
to  speak:  we  are  to  recognize  God's  character  so 
far  as  it  is  reflected  in  Christ's  consciousness 
of  and  confidence  in  God.  But  the  New  Tes- 
tament assertions  of  faith  and  our  own  expe- 
rience point,  to  my  mind,  toward  a  more  direct 
form  of  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ.  Christ 
becomes  the  revealer  of  God  to  us  not  only,  and 
not  at  first,  indirectly,  through  his  faith  in  God, 
but  also  directly,  through  his  words  and  deeds 
that  speak  to  us. 

This  is  made  more  clear  in  the  views  of  See- 
berg  mentioned  before.     But,  as  I  said,  See- 


23 2  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

berg  appears  too  rich  in  knowledge  of  the  inner 
life  of  Christ.  But  I  know  a  living  divine  who 
shows  more  reserve,  although  he  occupies  a  sim- 
ilar position  to  Seeberg,  and  either  has  greatly 
influenced  Seeberg  or  is  united  with  him  in  the 
influence  which  Isaak  August  Dorner  (f  1884) 
exerted  on  both.  I  refer  to  the  highly  esteemed 
oldest  professor  of  our  theological  faculty  of 
Halle,  Martin  Kaehler  (born  I835).1  Kaehler, 
like  the  early  Christian  tradition,  finds  the  ex- 
planation of  the  unique  character  of  the  man 
Jesus  in  his  substantial  connection  with  God. 
But  he  does  not  explain  the  union  of  the  divine 
and  human  life  in  Jesus  as  the  combination  of 
two  independent  beings,  but  as  reciprocal  inter- 
action between  two  personal  movements,  a  be- 
getting action  on  the  side  of  the  eternal  God- 
head and  a  receiving  activity  on  the  side  of  the 
humanity.  In  a  progressive  moral  development 
the  human  soul  of  Jesus  had  appropriated  the 
contents  of  the  life  of  the  Godhead,  and  the 
God-man  manifested  and  manifesto  his  increas- 
ing unity  with  God  in  the  prophetic,  priestly,  and 

1 M.  Kaehler,  Die  Wissenschaft  der  christlichen  Lehre,  Leipsic, 
1883,  3d  edition,  1905.  Since  this  lecture  was  given  Professor 
Kaehler  has  died,  September  7,  1912. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  233 

kingly  influence  which  he  exerted  and  exerts  on 
the  human  race.  Kaehler  shows  a  close  con- 
nection with  the  church  tradition  in  his  views 
on  the  Trinity.  But  he  remains  here  in  strictly 
Augustinian  paths;  the  triune  God  is  the  one 
God;  all  semblance  of  tri theism  is  absent.  And 
although  the  influence  exerted  by  God  on  the 
humanity  of  Jesus  is  ascribed  especially  to  the 
second  hypostasis  of  the  Godhead,  that  is,  as 
Kaehler  says,  to  God  as  far  as  he  is  restricting 
himself  in  his  self-revelation,  nevertheless,  also 
in  this  influence  exerted  on  the  manhood  of 
Jesus,  God  is  the  indivisible  one  God,  and  the 
second  hypostasis  remains  unlimited  in  its  rela- 
tion to  the  world  as  creator,  in  spite  of  the  in- 
carnation. And,  although  Kaehler  considers  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  indispensable  to  theology, 
he  admits  that  it  is  of  but  relative  value  for  ac- 
quiring salvation. 

There  is  a  closer  connection  between  these 
views  and  tradition  than  I  can  approve.  For, 
however  reserved  Kaehler  may  be,  still,  when  he 
derives  an  essential  Trinity  from  the  economic 
Trinity,  i.  e.,  from  the  revelation  of  God  in  the 
economy,  that  is,  in  the  history  of  salvation,  he 


234  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

asserts  more  than  I  venture  to  support.  But, 
in  spite  of  this,  I  considered  it  expedient  to 
draw  your  attention  to  his  views,  because  from 
them  we  can  see  how  far  even  conservative 
theology  meets  the  views  which  I  find  myself 
finally  brought  to.  I  lay  stress,  therefore,  on 
three  points  which  seem  to  me  important  in 
Kaehler's  statements. 

(1)  The  idea  of  the  incarnation  is  here,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  tradition  of  the  early  church, 
brought  nearer  to  that  of  inspiration,  perma- 
nent inspiration.    The  incarnation,  conceived  in 
this  manner,  does  not  include  a  change  in  God, 
but  is  the  indwelling  of  God  in  the  man  Jesus, 
and  this  indwelling  is  proportionate  to  the  re- 
ligious and  moral  development  of  Jesus. 

(2)  The    divine    character    of   Jesus    is    not 
proved  by  analyzing  his  person,  not  by  physi- 
ological or  psychological  investigations,  but  by 
pointing  to  the  prophetic,  priestly,  and  kingly 
influence  he  exerts  upon  men. 

(3)  Hence,  no  attempt  is  made  to  ascertain 
what  it  was  that  constituted   the  personality 
in  the  historical  Jesus.      Kaehler,  it  is   true, 
really  seems  to  regard  the  eternal  Son  of  God 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  235 

as  having  been  the  personal  subject  of  the  his- 
torical Jesus,  but  nevertheless  he  seems  to 
assume  that  Jesus  as  a  real  man  possessed  also 
a  human  self-consciousness.  It  is  not  want  of 
clearness,  as  I  think,  but  only  reserve,  that 
makes  Kaehler  abandon  the  attempt  to  under- 
stand how  the  human  self-consciousness  of  Jesus 
was  modified  by  the  indwelling  of  God  in  him.1 

If  I  were  forced  to  give  a  speculative  Chris- 
tology,  no  one  would  be  more  welcome  to  me 
than  that  of  Kaehler.  But  I  think  we  have  to 
become  even  more  independent  of  the  later 
traditions  than  Kaehler  has  done. 

In  trying  to  prove  this,  I  shall  at  first  go  a 
little  out  of  my  way.  The  oldest  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  which  we  know,  and  which  we  can  trace 
back  as  far  as  the  former  half  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, is  only  an  economic  one.2  The  one  God  is 

1  This  is  not  meant  as  if  I  would  deny  every  want  of  "clear- 
ness" in  Kaehler's  statements.      What  he  says,  e.  g.,  on  the 
enhypostasia  (1.  c.  §392  b,  p.  343;  comp.  §381,  p.  335/)>js,  to  my 
mind,  neither  intelligible  nor  tenable  (comp.  what  is  said  above, 
p.   128,  e.  g.,  about  the  language  of  Jesus). 

2  For  the  following  statements  comp.  my  Dogmengeschichte, 
4th  edition,  1906,  pp.  103  /.,  140  ff.,  245  ff.;  my  paper,  Die  Trini- 
tdtslehre  Marcells  v.  Ancyra  und  ihr  Verhdltnis  zur  dltern  Tradition, 
Sitzungsberichte  der  Berliner  Akademie,  1902,  pp.  764-781);  and  the 
notes  in  my  edition  of  the  so-called  Symbolum  Sardicense  (Das 
Glaubensbekenntnis  der  Homousianer  von  Sardika,  Abhandlungen 
der  Berliner  Akademie,  1909,  pp.  1-39). 


236  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

threefold  in  his  revelation  in  history.  His  Spirit 
or  his  Logos,  who  was  his  energetic  power  also 
at  the  creation,  lived  in  the  man  Jesus  in  such  a 
manner  that  Jesus  was  both  the  unique  Son  of 
God  who  reveals  the  Father  and  the  beginner 
of  a  new  spiritual  mankind,  the  first-born  among 
many  brethren.  Exalted  to  the  right  hand  of 
God,  to  a  position  of  royal  sway,  he  left  his 
Spirit,  the  Spirit  of  God,  in  the  community. 
The  Spirit  leads  the  way  to  the  Son,  and  through 
him  to  the  Father;  and,  when  all  the  redeemed 
have  been  made  perfect,  the  Spirit  of  God  will 
fill  all  children  of  God,  as  it  first  filled  the  first- 
born among  many  brethren.  The  special  sov- 
ereignty of  the  latter  will  then  cease,  as  Paul 
says :  Then  shall  the  Son  also  himself  be  subjected 
to  him  that  did  subject  all  things  unto  him,  that 
God  may  be  all  in  all.1 

It  is  of  no  direct  importance  for  the  question 
which  occupies  us  to  penetrate  deeper  into  these 
views  on  the  Trinity.  For  us  the  three  following 
thoughts,  held  out  by  these  views,  are  the  most 
valuable:  first,  that  the  historical  person  of 
Christ  is  looked  upon  as  a  human  personality; 
secondly,  that  this  personality,  through  an  in- 

UCor.  15  :28. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  237 

dwelling  of  God  or  his  Spirit,  which  was  unique 
both  before  and  after,  up  to  the  end  of  all 
time,  became  the  Son  of  God  who  reveals  the 
Father  and  became  also  the  beginner  of  a  new 
mankind;  and,  thirdly,  that  in  the  future  state 
of  perfection  a  similar  indwelling  of  God  has  to 
be  realized,  though  in  a  copied  and  therefore 
secondary  form,  in  all  people  whom  Christ  has 
redeemed. 

These  thoughts  have  their  root  in  the  New 
Testament.  In  support  of  this  I  refer  to  what 
I  said  in  the  fifth  lecture.1  I  add  only  that 
here,  in  the  idea  of  the  indwelling  of  God's  Spirit 
in  Jesus,  we  meet  with  the  oldest  formula  which 
tries  to  explain  the  unique  character  of  Jesus, 
the  formula  which  lies  at  the  root  of  the  story 
that  Jesus  was  born  out  of  the  Spirit  of  God,2 
at  the  root  of  the  story  of  his  baptism,3  at  the 
root  of  the  words  on  the  cross,  Father,  into  thy 
hands  I  commend  my  spirit,*  and  of  many  other 
New  Testament  statements — the  formula  which 
Paul  employs  in  a  prominent  passage  of  Romans, 
where  he  says  of  Christ:  Who  was  born  of  the 

1  Above,  p.  i82/. — 2Matt.  I  :  20;  Luke  I  :  35. — 3  Mark  i  :  io/., 
and  parallels. — 4  Luke  23  :  46. 


238  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

seed  of  David  according  to  the  flesh  .  .  .,  declared 
to  be  ike  Son  of  God  with  power,  according  to  the 
Spirit  of  holiness,  by  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.1 
Is  this  the  formula  which  solves  the  Chris- 
tological  problem;  the  formula  which  combines 
into  a  harmonious  whole  the  convictions  of  faith 
about  Christ  and  those  facts  which  historical  re- 
search, remaining  in  its  bounds,  has  to  recognize  ? 
We  might  feel  inclined  to  answer  the  question  in 
the  affirmative,  because  the  formula  does  justice 
to  both,  to  the  real  human  life  of  Jesus  and  to  his 
superhuman  self-consciousness  on  the  one  hand, 
on  the  other  hand  to  the  belief  that  he  is  the  per- 
fect revelation  of  God  and  at  the  same  time  the 
beginner  of  a  new  mankind.  And  there  are  sys- 
tematic theologians — of  German  ones  I  men- 
tion only  Professor  Wendt,  of  Jena2 — who  are 
satisfied  with  this  formula.  To  every  layman  to 
whom  this  formula  seems  intelligible,  we  ought 
therefore  to  say:  Be  content  with  it.  The  con- 
viction that  God  dwelt  so  perfectly  in  Jesus 
through  his  Spirit,  as  had  never  been  the  case 
before  and  never  will  be  till  the  end  of  all  time, 

1  Rom.   I  :  3  /. — *  H.  H.  Wendt,  System  der  christlichen  Lehre, 
Gottingen,  1906-07. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  239 

does  justice  to  what  we  know  historically  about 
Jesus,  and  may,  at  the  same  time,  be  regarded 
as  satisfactorily  expressing  the  unique  position 
of  Jesus  which  is  a  certainty  to  faith.  It  also 
justifies  our  finding  God  in  Christ  when  we 
pray  to  him. 

But  do  we  understand  what  the  Spirit  of  God 
is  ?  God  himself  is  spirit.1  The  activity  of  his 
Spirit  is  his  activity.  If  we  distinguish  between 
God  and  his  Spirit,  we  only  do  so,  as  Wendt  also 
says,  in  order  to  point  out  that  God's  infinite 
essence  is  not  exhausted  in  any  one  of  his  ac- 
tivities. 

Thus,  we  are  again  placed  before  a  mystery 
when  we  speak  of  the  indwelling  of  God's  Spirit 
in  Jesus.  And  we  could  also  argue  against  the 
formula,  that  it  can  easily  be  softened  down; 
in  which  case  the  unique  character  of  Jesus 
would  no  longer  be  expressed  by  this  formula 
as  clearly  as  faith  has  a  right  to  wish. 

My  last  refuge,  therefore,  is  the  term  which 
Paul  strongly  emphasizes  in  the  epistles  to  the 
Colossians  and  Ephesians,  the  mystery  of  Christ.2 

1  John  4  :  24. — z  Col.  4  :  3  (comp.  I  :  26,  27;  2  :  2);  Eph.  3  :  4, 
9  (comp.  i  :  9/.;  6  :  19). 


24o  WHAT  IS  THE  TRUTH 

And  what  is  this  mystery?  God  was  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  world  unto  himself,1  that  is  the 
mystery.  It  would  be  attempting  impossible 
things  if  we  tried  to  understand  the  historical 
person  of  Christ.  The  saying  of  Goethe:  Man, 
thou  art  as  the  Spirit  whom  thou  conceivest,z  is 
very  apt  in  this  connection.  We  must  learn  to 
content  ourselves  with  that  which  historical 
science  and  the  experiences  of  our  faith  teach  us. 
Both,  as  we  have  already  seen,  harmonize  very 
well  with  each  other.  The  "historical"  Jesus 
is  not  the  Jesus  whom  historical  science  paints 
when  it  eliminates  all  those  observations  which 
do  not  fit  into  the  frame  of  a  purely  human  life. 
Historical  science  is  not  able  to  do  full  justice 
to  Jesus.  Jesus  is  set  for  the  falling  and  rising 
up  of  many* — in  our  world,  too.  In  respect  of 
Christ,  only  a  position  either  of  belief  or  of  dis- 
belief is  possible.  And  no  science  can  prevent 
us  from  saying:  The  historical  Jesus  is  the  same 
as  the  Christ  of  faith,  i.  e.,  the  Christ  who  was  a 
man,  but  also  the  beginner  of  a  new  mankind, 


1 II  Cor.  5  :  19. — 2  The  first  part  of  Goethe's  Faust.  From  the 
German  by  John  Anster,  London,  1887  (Henry  Irving  edition), 
p.  38. — 3  Luke  2  :  34. 


ABOUT  JESUS  CHRIST?  241 

and  the  Christ  in  whose  face  we  behold  the  glory 
of  God,  our  Saviour  and  our  Lord. 

But  if  we  ask :  How  could  Jesus  be  this  ?  we 
must  answer,  we  can  never  penetrate  so  deep 
as  to  learn  how  God  made  him  what  he  was. 
No  one  knows  the  Son  save  the  Father,1  says  Jesus 
in  Matthew,  and  in  another  passage  we  read: 
The  stone  which  the  builders  rejected,  the  same  was 
made  the  head  of  the  corner.  This  was  from  the 
Lord,  and  it  is  marvellous  in  our  eyes.2  And  Paul 
says  after  a  similar  metaphor,  and  with  these 
words  I  close :  He  that  believeth  on  him  shall  not 
be  put  to  shame? 

JMatt.  ii  :  27. — 2  Matt.  21  :  42. — 3Rom.  9  :  33. 


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